


Come Out of a Far Country (For Thy Great Name's Sake)

by sesquipedality



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anya Lives, Background Plot Against the Mountain, F/F, Gen, Grief, Grounder Culture, Guilt, NO RAPE OR SEXUAL ASSAULT, NO THREATENED RAPE OR SEXUAL ASSAULT, No actual porn, Non-Sexual Slavery, Pining, Platonic bed sharing, Season 2 AU, Slavery, The Ark explodes, Various major character deaths (background), also:, and, and kinda a lot of background hegelian master slave dialectic, and opposes the use of rape as a way to heighten tensions or create a hurt/comfort dynamic, captive Clarke, hurt/comfort/hurt/comfort, low tech beats high tech in the right circumstances, mis-use of power, non-American style slavery, overly philosophical contemplation of ethics, overly researched worldbuilding porn, sci-fi is a state of mind, semi-historically based Grounders, this fic supports and promotes affirmative consent, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:15:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6278584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sesquipedality/pseuds/sesquipedality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 2 AU. The Ark explodes during reentry. </p><p>Clarke, captured by Anya and taken before the fearsome Heda of the Twelve Clans, must prove her value in the Coalition's war against their ancestral enemy, the Maunon, in order to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_She dreams of Tris. Tris, alive and whole, sitting by the fireside and learning to wage war._

_“No battle plan survives encounter with the enemy.” Tris's voice is sing-song on the old proverb, which Anya has repeated more times than either of them can count.  
_

_“Good,” Anya nods with approval. “But we plan anyway. Why?”  
_

_Huddled next to Tris, Clarke furrows her brow. “A plan is… also… goals. You define your goals, and... a plan is what you expect. With all the knowledge you have pre-battle, a plan is what looks to be the best way to reach them."  
_

_Tris squirms, her standard reaction to the excitement of blooming understanding. Fondness for her Second is a pain in Anya's heart. “There are always surprises in battle that you could not have planned for," Tris half-asks, her voice gaining in confidence as she continues. "If you know what your goals are, you can adjust your plan as the situation changes, and so continue moving towards them.”  
_

*** 

Anya awakens to voices. Clarke’s low husky murmur, hushing the whimpers of the injured girl. She can just barely make out their shapes in the darkness, Clarke a featureless shadow bent tenderly over the long hump of the travois and its passenger. 

The moon has long since set and there is no fire: although her three captives grumbled, they had not cooked the squirrels she had caught before eating them. A fire's smoke and light increase the risk of discovery, and she did not want to set a watch. They are secure enough, concealed by fallen branches. With the other two invaders badly injured and Clarke almost ill with the exhaustion of grueling travel and limited food, it's worth the risk to sleep the whole night-- unguarded, but without interruption.

_Weak _, a voice grumbles inside Anya, but the condemnation is one of habit. Clarke does not have the bodily strength and endurance of a warrior, or the woodcraft knowledge of even the smallest child, but she is fierce and brave and cunning. Her openheartedness and unending sense of responsibility remind Anya of Lexa in her struggles to sustain the coalition. Against her will, she can't help but admire her.__

Secretly, Anya is not sure that she would have been able to get Clarke this far if their fight at the _Drop-Ship_ had not been interrupted by the boy's shout for aid. The fact that Ravin and Murfi are too injured to survive on their own, and that Clarke could not hope to support, much less transport, these dependents solo, is much more effective at binding her to Anya than any rope could be.

She listens to the crackle of leaves and twigs as Clarke lays back down, curled close enough to Ravin's supine body to share heat. It is a cold night, under the open sky with no fire and no blankets.

Anya hopes that Clarke will be able to fall back asleep for the brief period until this grey halflight brightens into true dawn. With the two of them taking turns between pulling the travois and supporting Murfi on his injured leg, even the short distance still remaining to Tondisi will be arduous. 

  
And then?

  


The sentries will sight them and aid them for the rest of the journey.

  


She will be brought straight before Heda -- _Lexa_ \-- with her captives, to give her report and defend her actions.

  


And her plan, her goals in that confrontation? Three hundred of the army she led are dead, destroyed by the Skaikru's fire.

Although _Tristan_ was the one in command, when they died.

  


Tristan. Tristan of the highhanded arrogance and aggression, the hatred for anything and everything different. Anya assumes that Lexa put him over her in the fight against the invaders primarily as an excuse to remove him from the coalition's camp and its myriad opportunities to unwittingly cause offense.

In doing so, though, Heda ensured that the invaders would not be treated with subtly, that there would be no reconsideration. Tristan is a hammer. He does not think, he smashes.

  


Putting aside the fact that Tristan's decisions led to the death of three hundred warriors.... Anya is no longer sure that, in acting to destroy the invaders without stopping for negotiation, Heda made the right call.

  


_Goal?_ Anya wonders. _Keep these last of the invaders alive?_

Well... first: establish that Anya herself is not to blame for the loss of her war band. Second: discredit Tristan. If possible, craft a consensus that he mishandled the situation, that in seeking total anihilation of the invaders without pausing to reasses their capabilities, he left them no option but to light the Ring of Fire. Ultimately: stop the Mountain from taking new captives, free all those currently imprisoned, and see the Maunon slaughtered, root and branch, woman, man, and child.

And in service of that end... yes. Clarke and her people will be valuable, in the struggle against the Mountain. Anya must do all in her power to convince Heda that the invaders, with their strange ways and weapons, their understanding of the Maunon's sorcery, their healing that resembles blood magic, which would have saved Tris's life if Anya had captured Clarke earlier, if there had only been time... She must show Lexa that they can be assets, captives; anything besides enemies. In her plan to destroy the Mountain, Anya must convince Heda that, contrary to all expectations, the Skaikru should be not be executed, but adopted-- or at the very least, temporarily kept alive.

  


Clarke wakes up again after the light has brightened enough for colors, and Anya tells her to go down to the riverbank, to wash herself thoroughly.

Underneath the dirt, Clarke is a very beautiful girl.

  
  


Anya remembers Lexa when she first blossomed, the way her Second's awed eyes had tracked certain of their compatriots bodies, the particular combinations of features that left her tongue-tied and blushing. Oh, with age and experience Lexa has learned to hide those reactions, but underneath Heda's mask Anya is sure they still occur.

  


Lexa is careful to not give Anya special treatment, and Anya is just as careful not to do anything that would seem to ask for it. Still. Her familiarity with Lexa as a person, as more than just Heda, offers many advantages.

  


She will bring Clarke before Lexa with her hair loose and shining. Clarke's skin-- the astonishing skin all of the invaders have, flawless as a suckling child's-- clean and marvelous. Jacket off-- she smirks slightly-- leaving nothing but the thin and too-big shirt, and since the hands surely must be tied-- because Gustus would not let one who had been an enemy into Heda's presence, without some binding-- then tied in the back, not in the front, so that breasts are thrust forward under drooping neckline and draping cloth. With just a little planning, she will make the invader girl into an offering that Lexa's gaze cannot avoid.

  


And even though anyone who thinks it over will realize that this striking cleanliness is not magic, simply that Clarke washed before they arrived in Tondisi while Anya and Ravin and Murfi did not-- although Anya is sure that Gustus is the only one who could guess _why_ she would instruct Clarke to clean herself before presenting her to Heda, and Anya hopes that he will come to her way of seeing things quickly, because he would be powerful in opposition if he disapproves-- it will seem strange and hint of sorcery, the contrast with their road weary grime.

  


Anya learned just as much from Lexa as she taught her. Titus, she decides with satisfaction, did not think it entirely through, when he declared that the novitiates should become Seconds. Rumors are not traditionally a war-leaders weapon, but for these goals, Anya will wield them anyways.


	2. Chapter 2

Listening carefully, Lexa can hear the clink of bone tiles outside the muffling cloth of the tent. 

  
_Superstitions_ , Lexa imagines Titus' sneer. _Branwada village people, children-of-close-cousins--_

Her village people. Her warriors and generals. They have not yet spilled the guts of some young animal and read the future in the fall of its intestines, but that’s a matter of when, not if. 

  
A time of portents.

Flights of falling stars, comets that shriek across the sky and carve craters upon landing. Powerful signs. Although in the moment, no one had agreed on what they meant. Portents of fire, in hindsight. Portents of doom.

An entire village burned to the ground in a sudden conflagration. A band of three hundred warriors, turned to ash in an instant. _Anya_. Anya, nothing now but char and bone.

And a band of youth who come from nowhere, claim to have fallen from the sky. Invisible to every scout, if instead they traveled overland. Culpable for the destroyed village, safe and whole at the center of the ring of fire. Now, by signs that do not need a seer's interpretation, hidden away in the Mountain.

  
Except for the five prisoners.

  
About whom Tristan and Indra continue to argue.

 

Lexa straightens in her chair as Gustus steps through the curtainway.

"Heda." His voice is thick with feeling. "News from the perimeter guard. Anya yet lives."

***

Clarke wishes this were a dream. She would very much like to wake up, thank you.

For two days she and Anya have worked in concert to transport Raven and Murphy. Last night, when Clarke struggled to skin the squirrels, Anya showed her how to hold the knife better-- and she didn’t call her stupid even once. This morning, she volunteered to guard the others’ sleep so that Clarke could take a bath. And now! Once again, Anya is unpredictable, inscrutable, cruel. _Grounder_. She is _not even wearing Clarke’s jacket._

 

Indignation is a good distraction from the pulling ache in Clarke’s shoulders, the bite of the rope around her wrists. Indignation is a good distraction from fear.

  
Next to where Clarke and Murphy kneel, Anya holds the ends of Raven's sledge loosely in her hands and scans the surrounding trees. She tenses for a moment and then relaxes, but to Clarke, the figures that melt into the clearing in front of them seem to have come out of nowhere.

***

Lexa digs her nails into the palms of her hand. Her entire body quivers with the urge to stand up, to clutch at Anya and feel her, solid, warm and breathing.

Her First, alive! 

  
“Heda.” Anya has dropped to her knees in front of Lexa’s chair, bowing her head and shoving the girl she leads even lower, until the captive is pressed against the floor. 

When Anya straightens back up and meets Lexa's gaze, her eyes are the same as always, but the cheekbones beneath them are sharper than they should be--she’s dropped weight, too much for such a short time. Her hair is a matted mess. Lexa feels a familiar, shameful surge of disdain towards Tris, for letting their First get into this state, except that it's hardly Tris's fault. That death was confirmed days ago.

  
At Lexa's acknowledgment, Anya shifts back into a squat and begins.

“We attacked the invader's camp at dawn.”

 

It's a confirmation of Tristan's report, initially. Until...

“When I woke up I was in a dimly lit room. It was warm and humid and it smelled like piss and fear and sweat. I was in a metal cage. One of many cages. Directly above me was a man named Benning.”

Indra stiffens. Anya turns to look at her and nods confirmation. “He was taken from Tondisi.”

  
Anya remembers twenty-two names, but it's far from a complete list of everyone the Maunon have imprisoned.

“I don't know how much time passed. We were fed three times. Then this one came into the room.” Anya fists her hand in the girl’s cornsilk hair, shakes the prostrate form slightly. 

 

As the debrief continues, Lexa's mind drifts, imagining the retelling of Anya’s Escape around winter fires for years to come. 

_Crouched in the cage, wily Anya and the invader, now allies… Reapers with death on their breath, Reapers like a dog to heel when the Mountain Men called._

_Heavy was Anya's heart to leave behind those in bondage, but she carried truth like a flame and went to set the world burning._

_One on top and then the other, they wrestled like otters amid the bones of the fallen. Until the invader went still, at the cry of her injured. And submitted to Anya, to rescue her brethren._

_A cat to her mistress, Anya laid her prize at Heda’s feet._

_Eight lives in total, for the loss of the village, the deaths of the warriors, an unequal trade. Slow were their deaths, debt repaid with agony._

Lexa weighs the idea. Anya’s captives added to Tristan’s and Indra’s for a mass execution. The threat of the invaders put to rest so that the focus of the coalition turns to the destruction of the Mountain. It would make a fitting ending for a tale that begins with a Ring of Fire. 

 

“Heda, you believe this fable?” Tristan is looking at Anya with unmasked disdain. “A war leader who has lost all of her warriors, making up lies against the Mountain, an enemy who cannot be fought? She seeks to burnish her image and regain status. Is there any corroboration to her story? No.”

Indra’s fingers flex and then relax. Lexa knows her well enough to read a desire to wring Tristan’s neck in that brief movement. Delphi clan is far to the north, rarely touched by the Reapers. Tristan has never had friends or family Taken. He speaks sacrilege, implying that Anya would lie about such subjects for personal gain. 

Anya smiles at Tristan’s slander, sharp as a blade in the dark, and rests her hand gently between the shoulder blades of her bowed over captive. 

 

On Lexa’s gesture, Gustus steps forward to haul the invader upright. 

Kneeling, the girl sways unsteadily. Her face is flushed and her eyes are very blue, iris swallowing pupils shrunk tiny as carrot seeds. 

“They only speak Gonnaslang,” Indra notes from Lexa’s side. Anya shrugs agreement.

“Klark Grifan.” Lexa tests out the name, the taste of it on her tongue. The girl's eyes darken, pupils expanding into focus, and she straightens her back and lifts her chin. Lexa watches the bob in the girl's throat as she swallows, traces smooth skin to collarbone, sternum, soft curve of breast.

  
"It's hard to countenance, looking at you. _You're_ the one who who burned three hundred of my warriors alive?"


	3. Chapter 3

The boy Murfi _shrieks_ when he sees the collar, and trashes so wildly that it takes both Gustus and the healer to hold him still enough for the smith to do her work. When they step back, he sinks down onto the cot, head in his hands, shivering like a frightened rabbit. 

Clarke sidles forward to wrap her arms around him, glancing back to check for Anya’s disapproval. He holds himself stiffly for a moment before collapsing into her shoulder, and Clarke rubs his back with the long slow strokes Anya would use to calm a horse. She is murmuring to him, her tone comforting but too quiet for Anya to understand the words.

Lexa shifts, her mouth twisted in discomfort. “This feels like a step backwards,” she confesses in a low tone. 

Anya is fairly sure she knows what Heda means. Each expansion of the coalition has included the release of mutual war captives-- she’s not sure that she’s seen a collared thrall, since Azgeda’s concession. But it is the best resolution for the situation at hand.

 

Lexa and Gustus hurry the smith out of the healer’s tent once she’s done with the injured girl--an easy job, that one, Ravin is too deeply drugged to realize what is happening, much less offer resistance. They’ll do Indra’s captive next, and then the four being held in the pit. And that had been a lovely sight to see, Lexa pulling rank and claiming them for herself in tribute, when Tristan had snarled that _he_ would not make pets out of the invaders, whatever Anya and Indra did, that he intended to execute _his_ prizes, the sooner the better. 

Anya scowls. She hopes that Lexa sends him back to Delpi holdings with his tail between his legs, and _soon_. 

 

After several minutes Clarke detaches herself from the boy, who lies back on the cot and closes his eyes. His cheeks are wet, but he seems calmer. 

Anya was surprised by her flare of pride at the stoicism Clarke displayed at her own collaring. Really, the invader girl has exceeded her expectations in many ways today. 

She had been nervous when Heda began by confronting Clarke about the Ring of Fire, remembering the invaders’ snivelling plea of ignorance when they first met, back at the bridge, dodging responsibility for the destroyed village. 

In Heda’s tent, though, Clarke had not made excuses. “Yes. I am.” She’d looked Lexa straight in the eye, jaw stubborn.

Lexa had leaned forward. “And you burned one of my villages.”

Clarke slumped at that accusation, sighed. “We did. It wasn’t our intent to cause harm, but we didn’t think about the effect our actions might have on others, and we should have. We are culpable for the damage that resulted.”

Lexa had drummed her fingers against her thigh for a moment, and then leaned back in the chair. “What,” she asked, delicate, “precisely was your intent, when you fired those _flair-es_ , then?”

Anya felt a flash of retroactive sympathy for the messengers she’d sent back to Heda to report on the situation with the invaders. Maybe it’s not so shocking that Lexa had put Tristan in command over her-- it must have sounded like maddness. 

It still does, really. That the invaders had survived above the earth, in space, since the end of the Before Times-- and that they had believed the whole world empty of other survivors, what arrogance! There were many words Clarke used in her explanation of her people’s way of life--and what had gone wrong with it at the end, to send them hurtling down-- that have no meaning to Anya, or that she knows on their own, but has never heard combined together in the order Clarke said them. 

It was the same confusion again when Clarke talked about her time in the Mountain, and when she tried to explain the talisman that had allowed the Maunon to follow their flight.

Lexa took Clarke through finding the other two at their _Drop-Ship_ , accepting that abject surrender offered the best odds for keeping Ravin and Murfi alive. She made Clarke explain the burning light that had streaked across the sky on the afternoon of the Ring of Fire and then exploded, raining down hundreds of charred and twisted fragments that pit the ground and set several patches of the woods to blazing. Clarke had asked a lot of questions about that herself, getting as thorough a picture of what the witnesses had seen as she could, before she summarized what would have caused it-- _frikshon with the upper admosfir, no heat shielding_ \-- in a curiously deadened voice. 

“Lucky for you that none of that mess landed on any more of my villages.” Lexa’s tone had been dry, almost teasing, but Clarke was staring the floor and did not react at all. After a minute, Lexa’s expression softened. “That’s enough,” she’d declared, and turned to ask, in Trigedaslang, Indra and Tristan’s opinion on everything they’d just heard. Thinking back now, Anya realizes that the description of the exploding comet had dashed the last embers of any hopes Clarke may have cherished about the survival of the elders of her people.

 

And now, only a few hours after such a devastation, Clarke has already gathered herself to care for the two she seems to consider her dependents.

“Is she okay?” she asks the healer, moving to stand over Ravin. Seeing the healer’s incomprehension, Anya translates.

He’d removed the bullet. Based on injuries in that area he's treated in other patients, she might be able to use the leg eventually-- or she might not. He shrugs. Assuming, of course, that the wound heals cleanly and she doesn’t die of infection.

Clarke worries her lip between her teeth, asks if she can examine Ravin herself. He is clearly taken aback by the request.

“She is a powerful healer,” Anya explains, surprised by her own defensiveness on the invader girl’s behalf. She describes in detail what Clarke had done for Tris, and his eyebrows raise almost to his hairline.

“I am not sure if I would have understood your Second’s injury as well, War Leader,” he admits. “The treatment she used, it is sensible to me, but to make that diagnosis… and one so young, without a lifetime of experience to draw on…” 

Anya shows him the neat stitches Clarke had laced through the bite on her arm, too, and directs Clarke to pull out the little cache of needles and thread she had taken from the _Drop-Ship_ and tucked into her shirt. His eyes gleam as he examines the slender shining lengths.

 

When he’s done, he looks at Clarke silently for a long time, until she starts to fidget, then turns back to Anya and braces himself. “This one humbly asks if you have already made plans for the use of your thrall’s labor, War Leader. This one would be pleased if she came sometimes to work in the healing tent.”

Anya considers. She has been commanding increasingly large groups of warriors for twelve years, but it still feels odd having such total control over every detail of another person’s life. “Heda wants things from her,” she temporizes, “but I am sure there will be time left over. Yes, I will lend her to you when I can.”

Clarke has grown impatient with their incomprehensible conversation and moved to Ravin’s side to look under the wrappings. As they watch, she leans in to sniff at the poultice covering the wound. 

“Honey is the main ingredient,” the healer offers. Anya resigns herself to translating her way through a long discussion of wound care. She adds _teach Clarke Trigedaslang_ to the growing list of things that must be made to happen.

***

Titus would say it's self-indulgent and unbefitting her position, Lexa knows, to keep Anya close to her like this, but for days she had believed her _dead_. And Anya’s own tent is back with the supplies abandoned near the invader’s camp. Gustus certainly doesn’t seem to disapprove, he’d greeted Anya warmly when she arrived near sundown, and brought out a jug of spirits on his own accord to serve with dinner.

Anya had eaten like a starved wolf at first but finally she seems satiated, sucking idly on a marrow bone.

Lexa looks at the food left on the platter, then at Anya’s captive, the invader girl, _Klark_ , where she sits out of the way, subdued. Gustus had given her one portion but if she is anywhere near as hungry as Anya was, she’d be happy for more.

Her head spins when she stands up from the table. _Too much to drink_ , Lexa thinks, concentrating on not spilling the platter. 

“Eat as much as you like,” she declares, crouching to deposit the dish in front of the girl, and then repeats herself in Gonaslang when she realizes she’d spoken in the wrong tongue. She almost overbalances when she starts to rise to her feet, and she decides to sit down on the carpet for a minute, just until her head clears a bit. 

“Thank you,” the girl says. 

“Mochof,” Anya corrects from her place at the table. “Thank you is _mochof_.”

The girl repeats the word several times, confirming the correct pronunciation. 

“Mochof, _Heda,_ ” Lexa hears her own voice saying, in an unfamilar tone. It feels vitally important that, if Klark is to learn to to speak like a real person, she also demonstrate the proper respect.

“Mochof, Heda,” Klark echoes, obedient. Her voice is not what Lexa expects from looking at her, deeper and raspier. But really very pleasant.

When no further rebuke follows, Klark begins an examination of the remaining scraps. Lexa watches her struggle to get the flesh off of a bone, picking first with her fingers and then lifting it to her mouth to gnaw and suck. Her tongue darts out to lick the grease off her lips once she's finished, and then, after a furtive glance at Lexa, she carefully sucks each of her fingers clean. She is smiling, seemingly well content with the food. Lexa wonders if they had meat animals in the girl’s home in space.

 

When she finally navigates herself back to her seat, Anya’s expression is so deliberately bland that Lexa knows it conceals amusement. She avoids Anya’s gaze and rests her head in her hands. She is starting to feel nauseous with drink. It has been an overwhelming day. 

She has already sent messengers riding to summon a conclave to these woods, to discuss the revelations about the Mountain. It will be days and days before the first delegate arrives, though. There is time to rest. Tonight, she will sleep back to back with Anya, like when she was still a Second except in her own big and comfortable bed. Klark will sleep at their feet, Gustus will place his bedroll in front of the curtainway. For a few hours, the world, at least the part immediately surrounding her, will be exactly as it should.


	4. Chapter 4

_Humanity is resilient. We can adapt to anything, with time._ It's a phrase Clarke heard a lot up on the Ark, whenever some piece of equipment finally gave up, broke beyond all hope of repair, and life for everyone became slightly and permanently worse.

Clarke knows it's not true. She was in solitary for almost a _year._

  
_(Those first nights on the ground, she would wake up with a start, convinced that she was still in the Sky Box, that she had finally gone entirely mad and that the earth, the Dropship, all of it was a hallucination. Wells's death put paid to that. A world where he is gone and she is left to go on alone-- confinement would be_ preferable.)

  
On her eighth morning in the Grounder camp, though, covering a yawn as she and Raven slowly make their way back from the nearest latrine, Clarke realizes that in this case the old saying is true.

Passing more unknown faces than known ones, smoke rising up to mingle with the morning mist as the embers of last night's fires are extinguished, even the weight and chafe of the collar around her neck… it's all, already, familiar. Normal. Almost comfortable.

  
Murphy is blocking the entry to their sleeping tent, standing stock still. Clarke edges up behind him to peer over his shoulder. _His_ first duty of each day is to fetch the breakfast tray.

Four mugs of the Grounder’s herbal tea and four bowls of porridge, everything steaming hot. “Mm-mm....” Clarke can't help her hum of appreciation. Yesterday there was dried fruit in the porridge, sudden and sweet, and even plain it's tasty and filling.

“Shhh,” Murphy hisses, turning to glare at her. “It’s not just Her in there. There’s someone else.”

Now that she's paying attention Clarke can hear two voices from inside the tent, Anya's and a stranger's, talking rapidly in the Grounders’ incomprehensible tongue.

Raven navigates her way forward until she's right behind Clarke, pointy chin digging into Clarke's shoulder. Clarke tilts her head back to nuzzle their cheeks together. She is so glad that Raven is here too. She doesn't know if she could stand it, if the only other person with her amid hundreds and hundreds of Grounders was _John Murphy_.

  
From inside the tent Clarke can recognize the Grounder word for goodbye, farewell, I’m leaving. She grabs Murphy’s shoulder to yank him back from the curtainway and bumps into Raven and they are still untangling themselves, struggling to keep Raven and the breakfast tray upright, when Anya and the stranger emerge.

Anya stares at them as they straighten up sheepishly. By the dour look on her face, she can guess exactly what just occurred. Then she gestures at Clarke while saying something to the stranger.

“You're wanted in the healing tent,” she tells Clarke in English, her voice sharp.

“But--” Clarke never goes to the healing tent this early in the morning. First there’s breakfast, and then she helps Anya with the ties of her clothing and the placement of her various weapons while Murphy straightens anything lying around that’s gotten out of place. Anya leaves once she’s dressed, and now that Raven has joined them it’s her role to fluff Anya’s pillows and smooth out her blankets while Clarke and Murphy hang their bedrolls over the sunniest side of the tent, to air out the dampness that seeps up with lying directly on the floor. 

Only when all those tasks are complete do they gather up the empty dishes and head to their work assignments, Clarke with the healers and Murphy and Raven doing drudge-work in the cooking tent.

Anya narrows her eyes in warning. “You’re wanted in the healing tent _now_ , Clarke.”

Murphy smirks, clearly gleeful that she’s getting a scolding. Clarke gives the porridge one last longing look. Three full meals every single day has definitely been the easiest thing to adapt to. But she goes without further protest. 

***

Clarke recognizes the body on the cot. It’s _Lincoln_. Grounder Lincoln, Octavia’s Lincoln. 

And he is _chained up_. And with those chalky marks on his face, he looks a lot like a Reaper. 

  
Lida, the shrunken, white-haired woman who is the camp’s senior healer, gestures Clarke over to where she and Hosifmari, her junior, are standing at a careful distance from Lincoln's trembling, writhing body.

“One of the warriors brought him in this morning,” Deklan, Lida and Hosifmari’s apprentice, explains to Clarke in English. 

Deklan is several years older than her but Lida and Hosifmari treat Clarke almost as a colleague, despite her youth and her collar, and him like a glorified pair of hands. He’s new to healing-- it’s only a few months since the wreckage of his knee ended his career as a warrior. He was the one who made Raven’s crutches when it was clear her leg was completely paralyzed, and he’s showed her many tricks on how to get around with them. Clarke can't help but like him. 

Lida lets out a stream of words, and Deklan struggles to keep pace in translation. 

The Grounders had thought that the Reapers had a sort of contagious madness. When the first ones appeared their families had tried to capture them and bring them back to themselves, so the stories went, but it never worked-- they died, instead. Now, captured Reapers are executed immediately-- it’s considered a mercy killing. 

But based on Clarke and Anya’s escape from the Mountain, Heda wondered if there was something more to it. The warrior who caught Lincoln-- a woman named Indra, someone prominent in the camp, by the way Deklan says her name like Clarke should recognize it-- had delivered him to the healers alive, to learn what they might. 

  
On the bed, Lincoln moans, curling up around his stomach as much as the chains will allow. His nose is running like a faucet and his closed eyes are leaking tears. 

Hosifmari says something to Lida, who pulls out a key from a chain tucked inside her shirt. He takes it to a small chest in the back of the tent, the only one with a lock. 

“They’ve seen symptoms like this before,” Deklan tells Clarke. 

Hosifmari gets several globular seed pods out of the chest, dried out, tan and brittle. Deklan doesn't know the name for the plant in English-- it's a summer flower, purple-pink-- “he's going to make a tea from it. It’s used for bad pain, but it's very-- if you have it too frequently, you want it, down to your bones, and it can make you sick in a way that looks like this if you stop taking it suddenly." 

“It's addictive,” Clarke supplies, understanding. “That's the word my people used for coming to need a substance like that." 

Deklan's lips move, committing the new word to memory. 

  
Clarke watches carefully as Lida prepares the tea. Lincoln seems to calm almost immediately after Hosifmari manages to pour it down his throat-- by virtue of pinching his nose and waiting for him to open his mouth to breathe-- but Lida reminds them all that sedation and pain relief are among the seed pod’s effects, not necessarily an indication that it's alleviating his potential withdrawal. 

  
They dose Lincoln with the tea twice more, whenever he starts to sweat and writhe and whine. Each time, he doesn’t just quiet, his other symptoms decrease as well. 

Hosifmari and Lida consult with each other after the third time, tallying on their fingers. They’re coming up with a plan to wean Lincoln off the drug as quickly as is safe, Deklan narrates. 

Clarke hums acknowledgemt, distracted. One of the warriors broke his arm while play-wrestling and Lida said Clarke could be the one to splint it. Clarke’s pharmacology may suck, without access to the labeled pills of the medbay, but by Gounder standards her anatomy is excellent and her orthopedics aren't shabby either. 

  
She is pressing her fingers against the warrior’s wrist, counting the beats of his pulse carefully, when there’s a stir in the tent behind her. Once she’s certain the splint is not restricting circulation, Clarke turns to look. 

  
The slender dark-haired girl, Heda, the impossibly young leader of the Grounders, has just come through the curtainway. Accompanying her is her giant bear of a bodyguard, and Anya, and the dark skinned woman who was there when Heda interrogated them when they first arrived in camp and-- Clarke cannot believe it. 

The girl already breaking away towards Lincoln’s bedside even as the dark skinned woman reaches out to snag her arm and hold her in place-- it’s Octavia Blake. 

Octavia tugs against the restraining grasp for a moment longer and then goes still, sliding into a sulk Clarke has seen directed at Bellamy too many times to count. 

_Octavia Blake,_ alive. Octavia Blake, _here_ , in the Grounder’s camp, in the healing tent, just a few feet away. With the sickening dull gleam of metal around her neck, yes, she’s been collared too, but her hair is tidy in smooth, intricate braids, her clothing looks thick and warm, and there’s a handle jutting out from the small knife sheath strapped to her belt. 

  
After a minute Octavia gets bored with sulking. This is equally familiar, the girl has too much irrepressible energy to be stifled for long. Clarke watches her glance around the tent curiously. She can see it on Octavia’s face, the bloom of delight as the other girl recognizes her, but without anything approaching Clarke’s own level of shock. 

Octavia pulls at the dark-skinned woman-- her owner?--’s grasp again, and when the woman sees Octavia is aiming at Clarke this time, she lets her go. 


	5. Chapter 5

Lexa’s mind is still on the tents being raised next to her own, in the center of the camp. This afternoon and evening the delegates recuperate from their journey-- and speak to their informants, asses the lay of the land, plan out their next steps in the constant struggles for position and her favor-- and tomorrow they begin the Conclave.

  
The delegates were not the entirety of the caravan.

Titus has sent two full wagons of liquor and delicacies, five trunks of clothing-- impressive, ceremonial outfits as well as much of Lexa’s everyday winter wardrobe-- and her favorite handmaiden, Seely. Lexa is almost surprised he didn’t find a way to leave the novitiates in Polis and come to the woods himself, although she’s sure Seely is here as much to deliver detailed reports to Titus’s spies as to keep Lexa properly attired. If Lexa can pull this off-- if Anya and Clarke’s information is true-- it will mean more for her legacy even than bringing Azgeda to heel. _Mountain Feller. Curer of Reapers._ Like in so many other areas, Heda will receive the credit for the sum of many others’ work.

  
Lexa refocuses her attention on the healers. Hosifmari is, as usual, starting to descend into too much and too technical detail, his passion for his field blocking out his awareness of his listeners' actual knowledge level, but Lida cuts him off. Lexa listens attentively as her senior healer succinctly summarizes what their success at treating Lincoln implies: Reapers are addicted to a poppy derivative. Presumably deliberately, by the Maunon, as a method of control. With careful treatment, it should be possible to return a Reaper to himself.

Indra looks nauseous. Her oldest brother became a Reaper when Indra was still a Second, Lexa remembers, and Indra left her assigned post to track him down and kill him. _Set his spirit free_ , is the way Anya had said it when she recounted the story-- with a pointed follow-up on how Indra had been put on latrine duty for two months when she returned, for taking off without leave, and she hadn’t sulked or protested that the punishment was unfair even once. 

  
“Will Lincoln be fit to give testimony to the delegates tomorrow?” Lexa asks.

Lida lets Hosifmari take the question, and Lexa stops listening after she gathers that the short answer is no. She’s not the only one. Except for Hosifmari and Gustus, who is on the lookout for threats to Lexa’s person, even here, everyone else’s eyes are locked on the drama unfolding at the back of the tent.

  
Had no one bothered to actually tell Anya’s thralls that others of their compatriots had survived, outside of the Mountain? They had discussed the subject freely in front of Clark, when the decision was made to collar rather than kill, but, of course, the invaders do not understand Trigedasleng.

Lexa feels a stab of guilt at the omission, and then turns a reproachful glance at Anya, who is the one who accepted direct responsibility for Clark and the other two’s well-being. Anya catches the look and shifts with discomfort. Perhaps Lexa should have reminded her. Of the two of them, Lexa is the one with actual experience in holding political hostages.

  
Indra did what is proper, at least. Oktavia is clearly pleased to see Clark, but not surprised, either by Clark's continued existence among the living or her presence in the healing tent. Clark, on the other hand, seems utterly overwhelmed, clutching at Oktavia as if without physical contact she won't believe the other girl is real. 

  
Lexa recognizes the shapes of her own thralls’ names on Oktavia’s lips-- Bel-a-mi, Mon-ro, Stir-ling, Fin-- and Clark actually starts to cry.

Oktavia guides Clark down onto the cot where the warrior whose arm Clark was treating still sits, watching the display with interest-- Lexa notes with distant approval that he shifts respectfully to the end of the cot to give them space and privacy-- and wraps her arms around Clark, hiding the other girl's face from the room. Oktavia's eyes narrow when she notices the interested audience they have attracted, and she turns her body to block the sight of Clark's sob wracked frame even further.

Lexa remembers Clark in the same position, playing the role of comforter when the invader boy had wept at being collared. Anya's thrall has stayed strong and implacable in the face of so many losses, determined to hold together, to make the best of each situation for her remaining people, and it's only now, hearing good news, that she finally lets herself break down.

  
The healers’ apprentice bobs a half bow at Lexa and limps away, to the firepot that holds the kettle. The steaming mug he prepares has the fresh, flowery smell of calming-daisy-blossom tea. 

Clark emerges from Okatvia’s shoulder when he offers it, but doesn't drink, just cradles the warmth of the mug in her shaking hands. Tears are still sliding down her flushed cheeks, and her chest is heaving as she gulps for air. The apprentice maneuvers himself until he is seated in front of the cot and reaches up to place a hand on each side of Clark’s face, locking eyes and encouraging her to mimic his slow, steady breathing.

  
Even Hosifmari has noticed what is happening by this point, pausing his ramble to look at Lida for explanation.

“It seems that until now, no one has bothered to inform our Clarke that Indra and Heda’s thralls were also among her people’s survivors,” Lida says, her tone very dry. Hosifmari stares at Anya with disapproval, then expands the disapprobation to include Lexa as well. Indra looks faintly smug. The hind part of Lexa’s mind notes down the surprise of that possessive “our” in always-level-headed Lida’s mouth, and Hosifmari’s protective censure, for later examination.

Anya has never been good with guilt or apologies. She scuffs a boot on the floor of the tent and then changes the subject decisively. “If what you say of the Mountain's drugs are true, Lincoln’s crimes as a Reaper are properly laid at the Maunon's feet, not his. But even before that, he betrayed us to protect the invaders. After he is well enough to give testimony, Heda, will you execute him as a traitor?”

  


***

  


Anya's question may have been asked simply to take the focus off her negligence, but it's a good one.

Lexa turns the problem over in her mind, not able to relax into the meditative state that usually falls over her with the soft, repetitive tugs and strokes of Seely combing out her hair post-bath. 

 

As Lincoln's War Leader, Anya has first claim to offense at his betrayals.

But Anya won't insist on punishment, in the face of the threat posed by the Mountain and the fact that labeling Lincoln's aid to the invaders with the term _treason_ would only retrench the no-longer-useful image of them as dangerous enemies.

Indra, defender of Tondisi, who lost several of her villagers to the Reapers thanks to the distraction of Lincoln's actions, has second claim. Which Lexa fully expects her to surrender, both for the same reasons as Anya and for her own queer Indra-logic, that simultaneously disapproves of Lincoln’s… disobedience… and is proud of him for sticking to the principles that motivated it, even as she does not agree with them. 

And she will forgive him for the sake of her thrall. From what Lexa can ascertain amid conflicting stories, protection of Oktavia seems to have been the instigating factor in Lincoln’s… deception… and Indra, who is infamous for refusing every eager parent’s appeal on the behalf of their worthy offspring, is each day treating the girl less like a captive and more like a Second. 

  
Tristan, however, could be a problem. 

Whether he has a right to personal offense at Lincoln’s actions, when they were already in motion before his arrival and assumption of command, is a murky question. But even Tristan’s stunted political acuity is enough to dimly suspect that seeing _someone else_ punished for _anything_ related to the hash of the campaign against the invaders decreases the chance of blame for the Ring of Fire eventually falling on his own head. 

  
Delphi-Clan’s delegate is certainly savvy enough to persuade Tristan that persisting in his prosecution of Anya is a lost cause… and to seize on the much less well-connected Lincoln as an easy scape-goat, ensuring that Tristan, who is not just a War-Leader of Delphi but their Cheef’s own cousin, escapes the taint of that catastrophe. And Azgeda’s ambassador is sure to jump in on Delphi’s side, simply because it offers an opportunity to disrupt Lexa’s plans and create conflict. Lexa will have to act quickly in assuring Delphi that Tristan is safe from her censure, before the situation can escalate out of control. 

Lexa is considering various bribes, what she has to offer that could convince Delphi to keep Tristan muzzled and, ideally, recall him from the Coalition’s forces back to his own territory, when Gustus draws back from consultation with someone outside the curtainway and coughs to gain her attention. 

  
“Anya seek entrance, Heda.”

Lexa gestures to let her in, distracted from her previous musings. Anya’s request when they parted, that she might come to Lexa’s tent and borrow the use of Heda’s bath this evening, was out of character for a warrior who has always scoffed at the luxuries Lexa enjoys thanks to her position. It is more than a double handful of days since Anya escaped from the Mountain, so it is unlikely that she suddenly wants to wash the feeling of captivity off her skin. Perhaps it is simply that Anya has been having a trying time of it as well, and has decided to indulge in something much more relaxing than her usual cloth and bucket of cold water. 

“With her thrall,” Gustus adds, clearly surprised. “The, hmm, the light haired one. Klark.”

Behind Lexa, Seely goes still. Is Anya so changed from the First Lexa knew that she wishes her thrall to learn the full extent of a body-servant’s duties from Seely? It is hard to imagine Anya seeking out the pleasures of rank that she has always teased Lexa for genuinely enjoying. 

  
Anya certainly still looks like her usual self, stomping in as soon as Gustus steps out of the way, yanking her thrall after her with a tight grip around the girl’s forearm that Lexa still recalls with a sympathetic wince from her own years as Anya’s Second. 

Anya ignores Seely, bows perfunctorily to Lexa, and shoves her thrall into a much lower obeisance when the girl stays standing. She tugs Clark back upright immediately afterwards, and hurries the girl across the carpet until they are standing next to the bath, half re-filled already and with servants entering the tent with more steaming buckets. 

“Strip.”

Lexa is fairly sure that both Seely and her own expression must be a mirror of Clark’s-- the girl’s eyes are wide with shock. 

  
Impatient, Anya reaches out and starts undoing the ties on the front of Clark’s coat. Clark’s _thin_ coat, a part of Lexa notes. When this camp mustered out, it was late summer. She will need to talk with the supply master about following Titus’ lead and bringing in warmer clothing as the season shifts into deep fall.

By the third tie, Clark has lifted her hands to undo the rest herself. Lexa looks away once Clark has slowly slipped out of her shirt, as the girl’s hands are lowering to the belt of her pants. She looks back, though, after Anya has said “those too,” and, following a protesting huff of breath and a stubborn minute of stillness, there’s a soft _whumpf_ that, with shirt and pants already off, can only come from the girl’s underthings hitting the floor. 

It’s a very fast look, but still long enough for Lexa to see that, naked, Clark has a body like the thought of going to bed after a long, exhausting day. The girl is a promise of comfort, of softness and enveloping warmth.

Lexa laces her fingers together in her lap, stares at them, tries to focus on the slow strokes of Seely’s comb through her hair. It’s no use. Her eyes sneak back, stealing glimpses from beneath lowered lashes, darting out again and again like the pink tongue of one of the tower’s cats, lapping up a saucer of cream. 

  
Bottom to top. 

  
The girl has small, pretty feet, with soft, uncalloused soles. 

  
Her slender ankles lead up to well-shaped calves, then dimpled knees, which round and soften into lush, full thighs. 

Maybe it's the cold of disrobing, or maybe the girl is frightened, but her pale, downy body-hair is standing up slightly, soft strands drifting out and gleaming in the lantern light. 

  
By the way she’s standing, her people are private about nudity, but even with her legs half-crossed a small triangle of honey curls peeks out just above the join of her thighs.

Lexa is not sure whether it's just her imagination, the conviction that she can faintly smell the girl, a ripe, rich, tangy scent. 

  
She closes her eyes over the girl’s flaring hips, skin stretched tight over arching bone. Lexa’s mind is flooded with thoughts of how it would feel to drag her mouth against that satiny skin, to pepper it with kisses and then worry the bones with her teeth like a wolf pup, suck in marks as red as summer berries, press her fingers into them while holding Clark still beneath her. Lexa imagines flushed crimson deepening into purple bruises that she would revisit, renewing the marks again and again so that they never have a chance to completely fade. 

Lexa has not been this overcome with ardor since the early days of Costia, before her knowledge of Costia’s reciprocation of feeling made consummation possible and allowed her blood to cool to a manageable level.

Is a similar solution available here? It's a universal principle, even among the Azgeda, who are barbarians in so many other ways, that in pleasures of the body, anyone can say no and the rejection must be respected. Even if it comes from a thrall. 

Would the girl protest? Who could Clark appeal to, if Lexa pushed on anyways? Lexa is _Heda_.

Lexa remembers her most immediate predecessor’s voice, intense with the seriousness of his message. _Little Lexa, when -- if -- you are Heda, no one will have the power to stop you. And so, you must learn to stop yourself._

  
Lexa presses her lips tightly together and pushes away the dangerous, impossible thoughts, but when she reopens her eyes, she can’t help glancing back up. 

  
Lovely, gently curving belly; ample breasts that offer too much to be constrained by covering hands, spilling out and over Clark’s grasp at modesty; the collar around the slim neck, chafed skin already healing into smooth, shiny, calloused scar-- 

  
There’s a tenderness and vulnerability to Clark’s face that Lexa has never seen before, as if the girl’s earlier breakdown has destroyed her barriers beyond all rebuilding. Not just the tear-abraded flush to her cheeks, the faint swelling around her eyes, but a new soft sadness in the plushness of her mouth, a resignation lurking beneath the stubborn jut of her little chin. 

Clark catches Lexa’s gaze, staring back in challenge, and Lexa feels her own blush starting as she returns her eyes to her own lap, this time for good. 

Does Clark realize that Lexa is one of the rare women whose preference is for those who share her form, or did she simply chalk Lexa’s close examination up to prurient curiosity?

By the expression on Clark’s face when she caught Lexa out enjoying the sight of her body, Lexa is fairly sure that Clark has figured out it's the first explanation rather than simply assuming the second. 

It’s easier once Clark is actually in the bath. When Lexa looks up, all she can see is the back of Clark’s head. 

And Seely has stripped off Lexa’s own covering cloths now that Lexa’s hair is finally dry and smooth, bundled it up on top of Lexa’s head and stretched her out on the bed on her stomach, naked, so that Seely can coat her with sweet-smelling oil and rub the tension out of her muscles. There’s a potential for reciprocity that makes everything feel less unequal; Clark can look back at Lexa, should she want to. 

Seely’s hands slow on Lexa’s shoulders and Lexa twists her head to catch the disapproving tilt to Seely’s mouth, follows her gaze to where Anya is washing out Clark’s hair. Even a body-servant, Lexa supposes, can take pride in doing their job well, and disapprove of interlopers who do not maintain the standard. 

  
Lexa’s next theory, before Clark’s bared skin blew all thoughts out of her head, was that perhaps Anya meant the bath as an apology, a nice gesture to make up for subjecting the thralls to eight days of unnecessary grief and heartbreak. 

As Clark comes up, spluttering, after Anya pushes her head under to rinse out her hair, without any warning of the impending submersion, Lexa is fairly sure that explanation does not make sense either. 

The logic of Anya’s actions only emerges after Clark’s bath is finished, once she has been wrapped in blankets and shoved roughly down to sit in front of the crackling brazier. 

Lexa is covered up herself, wiped clean of excess oils and slid into the crispness of a fresh-washed night dress, sitting up in bed with a fur around her shoulders, sipping a cup of hot spiced wine. She has completely forgiven Titus for his high handedness in sending Seely unasked for. Gustus does his best, but it is too long since Lexa has enjoyed the comforts of Polis, and longer still until she is likely to return. Truly, it is only appropriate that, if this war camp is to transform itself for the length of a long siege against the mountain, a few of those transformations lead to a significant increase in Lexa’s physical comfort. 

Seely gets up from where she sits at the end of the bed when Anya starts poking through Lexa’s trunks, emerging with the small box that contains highly scented oils. Anya is pulling the stopper off one and then the next, sniffing them curiously. 

  
“May I help you, War Leader?” Seely asks in her best humble-handmaiden voice. 

Anya glances at her distractedly. “She needs to smell good. My thrall. Clark needs to smell good.”

Has Anya gone mad? Seely shoots a querying look at Lexa, and Lexa can only shrug in response. 

“Tomorrow,” Anya explains in a frustrated tone, clearly having caught their exchange, “when she goes before the Conclave. Every sense must persuade the delegates of her uncanny strangeness, of her power and her value.”

Lexa cannot imagine the report Seely will dictate to Titus’s next messenger, nor the look on Titus’s face when he receives the tale of this evening. If Lexa sent words to him herself, could she convince him to respond with a second handmaiden? Before watching Seely, entirely in her element, transfigure Anya’s halfbaked plan to present Clark to the delegates in the guise of a sorceress, Lexa has never, she realizes now, fully appreciated the handmaidens' value. 


	6. Chapter 6

It surprises Anya initially, that Lexa decided to open the Conclave with song. Maybe _open_ is the wrong word. The sun outside the tent has surely risen high in the sky before the final lines and, if the bard were not so skilled, the delegates would be shifting over their shoulders to look for the arrival of the lunch tray.

First is The Song of the Stranger. Some stanzas are new to Anya, added since Azgeda joined the Coalition, how the Stranger visited them, too. _Out of the rising sun he came to the Ice Kingdom in his_ eh-tee-vee _, speeding across the snowy plains faster than a running horse. Until he came to where the King made camp, where the wind blew chill off the Glacier._ The Stranger’s alternate threats and promises to the Ice King were the same as those delivered to every other clan: destroy your remaining guns and bullets, surrender the last wondrous artifacts you have managed to preserve from the Before Times, or my people will rain down destruction beyond your wildest imaginings. 

The bard lingers over the other part of the Stranger’s initial message, an emphasis that Anya has never heard in any other telling. _Give me the best portion of your youth,_ the bard cajoles in the Stranger’s voice, _give me the strongest, the most hale and beautiful, every season in tithe, and in reward my people will share with you great gifts._

The Ice King said no to all of it. Every clan the Stranger visited said no. 

 

There’s a gloriousness as the song shifts into The War Against the Mountain, but it’s not the quick, shining glory of victory in battle. It’s slow glory, mournful glory, a dirge of heroes who died in vain and village after village blossoming into fire under the assault of the Stranger’s --the Mountain Men’s, the Maunon’s-- _rah-kets_.

This song ends with four days of siege, an army composed of the warriors of all twelve clans standing united in the unceasing rain outside of the door that led into the Mountain. The door did not open. The Maunon did not not appear.

Then the clouds parted, the rain stopped, and drifting down from the Mountain there came a strange orange fog. A burning fog, an acid fog, and when it lifted, those at the edge of the army, those who had escaped it’s malevolence, could see that their compatriots were dying and dead. And the Maunon had come out of the Mountain, and they stood, unharmed by the fog, sunlit in the center of the killing field. 

While their few remaining warriors searched among the fallen for survivors, ending the choking agony of companions too badly burned for healing, the clan leaders, Cheefs and King and Meiors and Heda, who only led one clan, then, before the Coalition, had bowed knee to the Maunon. 

They had gone back to their peoples and told the smiths to bend the barrels of every gun beyond any hope of ever firing. If Maunon appeared and demanded relics, they let the Mountain Men load them into their vehicles without protest. But the terms of surrender had not included any mention of giving up their youth.

  
The next song in the cycle should be How the Clans Came Together to Form the Coalition. It’s a song of new growth out of devastation, saplings shooting up amid the barrens after a forest fire. The Meior of the Lake People had died in the acid fog, and, rather than choosing a new leader, the Lake warriors had selected Heda to represent them in the meeting with the Maunon. After, they had chosen to continue following Heda, eventually electing a new Meior, but one who stood lower than Heda, and assented to her wishes. 

Seventeen summers and two Hedas later, the Cheef of Broadleaf Clan had shown up with three Nightbloods, pledging that if one of their own was next to receive the flame, Broadleaf too would follow Heda and join in what now deserved the title of Coalition. With three Clans united, the others fell fast to strength and prosperity. All except Azgeda in their western wintery fastness, stubbornly distinct until two years ago. 

  
Instead, though, the bard starts a song on the emergence of the Reapers. It’s not one Anya has heard before. “Where did the Reapers come from?” the bard asks, and, “what do the Reapers do with those they have Taken?” In place of an answer the bard repeats the second message of the Stranger’s Visit: “give me a tithe of your people, the first Mountain Man said. Give up your young and strong, give up your whole in body, for my desire for them is great beyond telling.”

 

When the bard is finished, Lexa stands. ”Fifty years ago, before we joined in Coalition, each of our separate clans was party to treaty with the Mountain. We let them take our guns. But we did not agree to give them our people. By the end of the war, the Maunon were too canny to ask for the tithe they desperately needed. They found a way to take it from us anyway, without our realizing.” 

Before the delegates can react to her words she gestures, and Gustus opens the curtainway, and there are the servers from the cook tent, with lunch. And pitchers of wine, mead and strong ale, thanks to Titus’s foresight, damn him for being right, because it will be better if the delegates’ heads are a little bit muddled for the ensuing conversation.

***

Anya asked Lexa last night, why Heda had not had her rehearse her report, polish her speech until it became a masterpiece of trickery and doubletalk sure to convince the Conclave.

“Tent walls are thin, and everyone in a battle-camp gossips,” was Heda's answer. Lexa was not, for once, trying to manipulate, and the fact that Anya spoke unrehearsed would demonstrate that. Heda’s opinion of the delegates is high, she attributes to them sufficient integrity, loyalty, and stubborn pride to react to Anya's unvarnished tale of the Maunon's atrocities with a resolution that such acts can not be allowed to continue. 

Still, it's Titus's training that sees Anya delivering her report over a meal, seated at table and supping with the Conclave like a trusted equal. Once the delegates have exhausted their questions, boiled with rage at the Mountain's treachery and begun to subside into statements that skirt resignation at the fact that the Maunon, nonetheless, are an enemy who cannot be fought, Lexa has Gustus usher Clarke into the tent.

  
Lexa's handmaiden-- _Seely,_ Anya will name her in grudging acknowledgment-- has done an excellent job. Anya wanted no face paint at all but Seely convinced her to accept a slight darkening of brows and lashes that now adds intensity to Clarke's gaze. The pale, pristine fine-spun shirt is Seely's best, as Clarke is too generously curved to fit into one of Anya’s or Lexa’s. Lexa’s simplest cloak, dark blue, offers a stark contrast, with Clarke's golden hair falling unbound over everything, faintly scented with summer flowers even though the grass outside is grey and rotting with late fall, it's length and gleam a testament to year after year of prosperity and good health.

Anya has begun to realize that the uncanny calmness on Clarke's face in response to the stares directed her way by a tent-full of clearly powerful people-- the same lack of reaction that Clarke has shown at each new surprise or burgeoning confrontation since her surrender at the _Drop-Ship_ , so different from the unceasing fierceness Anya was coming to expect from the girl previously-- should be a cause for concern, not respect. This new Clarke reacts to potential danger with disquieting indifference, she is stoically determined to bear any forthcoming hurt becomes she seems to believe that she is powerless to prevent it. To the delegates, though, Clarke simply seems aloof-- and in the face of their collective might, that lack of affect is itself impressive. 

 

The delegates do not understand most of the words Clarke’s uses any better than Anya or Lexa do. What matters is Clarke’s tone, the confidence with which she replies to Heda’s questions with lists of strange instruments, spells and enchantments the Maunon could employ to to track the Twelve Clans’ warriors, tell when a far-off village breaks one of the Mountain’s prohibitions, detect well-concealed scouts and let loose the acid fog. Fell powers, the Mountain wields, but Clarke treats them as everyday puzzles, the only question being what was chosen from several possible tools.

Once her other girl-thrall has been summoned before the Conclave to speculate in more detail on the Maunon’s methods, Anya knows the delegates are convinced. 

Last night, Seely nagged at Anya to have Ravin bathed as well. The handmaiden acknowledged it was the wrong strategy quickly enough, though, once Anya explained Ravin as a skilled artisan with a leg that no longer works. In fact, Anya is fairly sure that Seely has added soot smears to Ravin’s skin and clothing, because it’s unlikely the girl could acquire them in the course of her current duties. _A crippled smith_. That’s a figure with old echoes, sparkings of fate and new legends in the making. Between the presence in the camp of two captive invaders who seem to come out of myth and the strong liquor they’ve been drinking, the delegates are ready to move on from deciding _whether_ to go up against the Maunon to arguing over the logistics of _how_.

***

After the evening meal is finished Anya orders her three thralls out of the tent, guiding them through the maze of canvass to halfway across the camp, where Lexa’s five are held. Every campfire they pass is loud tonight, raucous with the happy news that most of the warriors are soon to be heading home.

The delegates would likely have wanted to protest that decision-- every Cheef and Meior had been delighted to give a portion of their forces to Heda for this expedition against the Reapers, with all of the summer’s bounty already gathered in and nothing for the fighters to do in their villages over the cold months but drink too much and make trouble. Truly it was a joy and an honor to let their warriors sit in the woods instead, under camp discipline and fed out of Polis’ stores-- but Lexa suggested it while the cook tent’s servers were still clearing the table, and _everyone in a battle-camp gossips_.

The discussion over evacuating every village in a wide cordon surrounding the Mountain was much more incendiary. The Conclave exploded into a storm of protests as soon as Heda suggested that every clan should do their part to house the resulting refugees. Delphi quieted first, Anya noticed. She’d seen Delphi relax when Heda prompted Anya to start her report with her awakening under the Mountain, with no lead-up through the disastrous campaign against the invaders under Tristan’s command. Clearly Lexa has already found time to speak one-on-one with the representative of the northern clan, offering both threats and bribes to sway Delphi to her side. 

Now, Lexa arrives silently at Anya’s side, standing in the darkness outside of her thralls’ firelight and watching their reunion. Anya is surprised that Heda makes the time to be here, but she does not let it show. Instead, relying on the concealing sound of the surrounding camp to muffle her voice from those they are watching, she talks her way through what she knows of the invaders and their relationships with each other. 

  
The curly haired boy, somewhat older than the others, really more of a young man, Oktavia’s extremely handsome brother Bel-a-mi-- he and Clarke had traded leadership of their people back and forth over the course of the time Anya’s scouts observed them. Their struggle for influence had been contentious and she admits that she is surprised to see Clarke fling herself into his arms. He stumbles at the added weight-- his ankles are fettered, upon looking for it Anya can see that all of Heda’s thralls are shackled so that they cannot move their feet more than few hand's width apart-- but once his stance is steady he wraps his arms around her for a long time, rocks her back and forth with his mouth pressed against the top of her head. Next to Anya, Lexa shifts and frowns, until Ravin navigates the edges of the campfire to lean against Clarke and Bel-a-mi, and their arms stretch to embrace her as well. 

Murfi, Anya’s third thrall, is treated with much more restraint. “They don’t seem to like him,” Lexa observes. Anya huffs agreement. She can see how the boy would be unpopular, with his tendency to sneer and his standoffish coldness, although his behavior as a captive has been much better than her scouts reported him acting in his own camp. Not for the first time, Anya finds herself wondering with disapproval about the perished elders who sent these youths down to the ground alone, who have somehow raised their children up with the wary reactions of a dog who waits for the next beating.

Lexa listens impassively as Anya expresses surprise over the obvious distance Clarke is keeping between herself and the longer-haired boy, Fin. “They were lovers,” she explains, too distracted to pay much note to Lexa’s scowl. The awkwardness in the greeting between Ravin and Fin as well, the practiced way that Clarke and Ravin shield each other as they avoid his beseeching hands, which reach first for one girl and then the other, hint at a common enough story. 

Mon-ro and Stir-ling, the younger ones, the followers, are the least interesting to Anya, but Lexa’s eyes soften to see them crowd happily into Clarke, as if her very presence means safety.

  
And it’s illuminating to overhear the way Clarke tells the story of the Mountain to her _own_ people. There's suppressed rage in her voice when she explains what she knows of the Treaty, that the Twelve Clans were forced to give up the last of their surviving _technologies_ , that Mount Weather made them into _ignorant savages_ so as to oppress them and exploit them, to avoid viewing them as equally human.

Clarke, Anya is surprised to realize, is very angry with those of her compatriots who were content with the Mountain Men's blandishments, who didn't care to look and see the monster beneath the mask. The other thralls express concern that the Maunon might be moving to treat their fellows as they do the _Grounders_ , after taking _Jasper’s_ blood, but Clarke seems to view that possibility as no more than her brethren deserve for their complacency.

At a certain point, Anya slips away. She has given her thralls permission to sleep with their former companions, tonight, and for her own self, she is tired. She leaves Lexa behind, still lingering on the edge of the firelight, watching their thralls laugh and weep and mourn those who perished when their former home burned in the sky.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back after long hiatus. We'll see how this goes.

The camp shrinks. 

Three weeks after the conclave, walking to the latrines means traveling down no-longer-avenues of hard-trampled dirt, past the flattened patches where tents had stood, the blackened rings of fire circles. The remaining tents have clustered together at the center of the camp, neatly filling in the emptied spots, but someone decreed that they would continue using the further-flung latrines rather than dig closer in and risk compromising water safety. 

Clarke’s friends mostly prefer the reduction. Raven, still strengthening the muscles needed to get around on crutches, appreciates the shorter distance to her kitchen duties. For Murphy and Bellamy, Finn and Monroe and Sterling, the walking doesn’t matter but fewer warriors equals less wood in need of chopping, less water that must be carried.

Octavia doesn’t care either way, but that’s because Indra has Octavia learning wrestling moves and practicing sword drills, not ruining her hands scrubbing pots out with lye ash and sand. When Octavia demonstrates her new skills one night and pins Finn to the ground, the expression on Bellamy’s face is an odd blend of relief and anxiety. 

Clarke’s own feelings on the emptying camp are decidedly mixed. She’s excited about the implications -- it’s part of the plan against the Mountain! -- but it’s turning out that there are many villagers who are too old, too sick, or too pregnant to participate in the forced marches of evacuation. The warriors bring them back to the main camp, instead, and while there’s rumors of a wagon train that will transport the infirm in comfort, for now the healing tent is near-to-overwhelmed by the necessity of their care. 

Clarke doesn’t have many free evenings to spend with the Hundred discussing their reactions to these changes, though. More often than not, when Clarke finally staggers home at the end of the day, Raven and Murphy have already been and gone to join the others, and Anya is impatiently waiting to lead her to Heda’s quarters for a late dinner. 

 

Now, Clarke settles into her usual spot in the corner-- after the second night, the wonderful Seely had provided a lovely little embroidered cushion for Clarke to sit on-- and quickly devours the contents of the rough wooden platter Seely has handed to her, picking out the occasional word in Anya and Lexa’s rapid conversation.

Periodically on these nights, one of them will turn to Clarke and drop into English with a demand for further information about the Mountain, its structure and its technologies. Some of these questions are later followed up in queries to Raven, Clarke is fairly sure, but Clarke is the only one who is summoned to the tent for meals. 

 

Tonight, Clarke doesn’t respond when Anya barks out a question about the acid fog. She’s managed to put the empty plate down on the floor, curl up around the cushion, and fall fast asleep.

 

Of the four of them in the healing tent, Clarke is, by far, the most experienced with obstetrics. Births weren’t that common on the Ark, but they’re much, much rarer in a battle camp, and the others have spent their entire careers as military healers. 

Two days ago, one of the extremely-pregnant village women entered into active labor. Three others followed her, the last one starting a few hours before dawn this morning. Clarke has not left the healing tent that entire time.

Once the last placenta was delivered and confirmed complete, and the last mother was succesfully nursing, with Deklan instructed to periodically check the hardness of their wombs and wake Clarke if they softened or the bleeding refused to slow, Lida had directed Clarke to lie down on one of the cots herself, to take a nap. She had slept, she is fairly sure, for a little more than an hour.

But then the warriors had brought in an old man with venous leg ulcers. 

The ulcers, terrible enough on their own, were badly infected and leaking stinking green pus. Deklan had been assigned to care for them, and Clarke had woken up to the sound of him retching at the sight and smell. He is so new to medicine; his stomach is laughably weak. 

Clarke had gotten out of bed, then, obviously and taken over the job. After the sores were cleaned and bandaged there was a warrior who had somehow scratched his cornea, and then a young girl with a twisted and shriveled foot who mostly needed cheerful company and reassurance, and-- Lida, finally noticing that Clarke was up, about, and thoroughly exhausted, had sternly sent her back to Anya’s tent to get some actual rest. 

 

In the end Clarke had enough time alone to clean her teeth and splash water on her face and strip off her outer garments. She’d crawled into the center of the bedroll, which was clammy and chilly without Raven and Murphy on either side, and pulled the covers up over her head. She was just drifting off when Anya entered the tent. Then a boot was prodding Clarke in the ribs. 

“Lazy, that’s what you are. Lying down while light still glows in the western sky! No wonder your companions all chose to stay in the Mountain, you’re all soft, useless--” and Clarke had dragged herself out of bed, gotten dressed in the same trousers but a clean shirt, shoved her feet into her boots, and trundled off to Heda’s in Anya’s wake.  


***

  
Lexa slips down from her chair to look more closely at the sleeping girl. “Wake her up,” Anya says, chin jutting forward, but she subsides at Lexa’s disapproving glance. “I think they work her too hard, in the healing tent,” Anya admits quietly, a few heartbeats later.

Lexa frowns at the dodge in that statement. “Clark is your thrall, Anya. You are the one responsible for how she spends her days; Lida and Hosifmari have only borrowed the use of her from you.”

Anya exhales heavily through her nose. “They try to send her back to rest, but she stays and keeps working. She will not stop while there are still those in need of care.”

Lexa nods in distracted acknowledgement. The lack of sufficient and well-trained healers in many of the smaller villages was something she has been abstractly aware of for years, but the steady stream of pathetic figures that her warriors are bringing into the camp is throwing the damage resulting from that insufficiency into sharp relief. 

 

Seely is standing at Lexa’s side, offering her a thin, finely-woven blanket. Lexa reaches out to take it, to drape it over Clark, and then hesitates. 

The girl’s position looks uncomfortable. She is coiled tight as a babe in the womb, knees bent and arms clutched to her chest, spine twisted on the diagonal and hip bone surely digging into the floor. 

Her face should be relaxed with sleep but there’s a deep furrow still creased between her delicate brows, a downturned sadness lurking in the corner of her slackened mouth. 

When Lexa crouches down and gently shakes Clark’s shoulder, the girl turns her head and burrows deeper into the pillow. The embroidered pattern has pressed itself into the soft skin of her cheek. Lexa pauses with her hand still touching the girl, enjoying the feeling of her solid warmth even through all the layers of cloth. 

Decided, Lexa rocks back onto her heels and then up to her feet. “Put her in my bed,” she tells Seely, and she strides back to the table and plops down into her abandoned chair. Anya raises an eyebrow, and Lexa scowls. “The floor is hard and cold,” she mutters defensively, and then she gestures for Gustus to pour them the after-dinner wine. 

 

Lexa doesn’t watch as Seely draws Clark up to her feet, chivies her over to slump against the side of the bed. Seely kneels to unlace Clark’s boots, gently encouraging the girl to lift one foot and then the other, and then frowns over the variety of substances spattered on her trousers and half pulls the girl up enough to slide them down and away.

Lexa certainly doesn’t look as Clark’s long, soft bare legs swing up and into the bed.

 

Anya, who had been saying something that Lexa has missed in the course of all this not-looking, has fallen silent. She seems to be avoiding catching Lexa’s gaze, as if she fears she’ll burst out laughing. 

Lexa takes a tiny sip from her wine cup and then snatches two walnuts off the bowl at the center of the table, slotting them together in her palm to split open barehanded. The resulting crack is very satisfying. 

 

Anya doesn’t mention Clark when she leaves for the night.

Lexa stares at the lump in the center of her bed, curled tight as a fiddlehead fern, while Seely brushes and rebraids Lexa’s hair for sleep. Lexa’s view is occasionally interrupted as Seely whisks her clothing off; drops a thick, warm sleeping shirt over her head. When Seely reaches to turn down the covers and stops, flummoxed at the way the girl has twisted up half the length of the blankets around her coiled up form, Lexa whispers for Seely to leave, she’ll deal with it herself. 

Seely freezes for a long moment, then nods and bustles off behind the screen that conceals her own bedroll and personal items. Lexa tugs gingerly at the closest edge of cloth. There’s enough lose that she can slip underneath.

She lies flat on her back in the chilly, narrow gap between the edge of the bed and the girl, and lets out a long breath in exasperation. When she sits back up, she tugs on the blankets again, and this time she unwinds Clark, rolls and shoves the girl until she’s moved from the center of the bed to the far side. The girl is so deep in sleep that she barely stirs. 

As Lexa settles back down, it’s into warmth-- the mattress and the coverings have been heated by the girl’s body, and now Lexa has stolen the cozy spot. She stretches luxuriously, top to toe, and grins to see the frown forming on the girl’s face in response to the frigid touch of the vacant bedding. 

Rather than accepting her new environs, Clark is soon flailing feebly, blindly moving towards the warmth emanating off Lexa’s skin. Over the course of a hundred heartbeats she inches her way across the bed like a newborn rooting for the nipple. Eventually, she manages to tuck herself up under Lexa’s chin.

Lexa’s arm starts to cramp and she reaches out and drapes it over the girl, hand resting lightly between Clark's shoulder blades. When Clark relaxes, the unwinding of her bony knees and elbows periodically pummels Lexa’s ribs and thighs, but Lexa never pushes her away. 

 

It’s still dark and very cold, the braziers nothing but ash coated embers, when Lexa emerges from the upper level of sleep into sudden alertness. 

It’s not the low murmur of Gustus’ voice outside the tent that’s bothered her. Some of Lexa’s adjutants are prone to seeking her counsel for _everything_ , whatever the hour. Gustus has had many opportunities to practice his stone-warrior face as he tells the botherers that their issue can wait at least until Heda has had breakfast. 

The noise didn’t wake Lexa, but the same is not true of Clark. The girl’s body, still curled in Lexa's embrace, is no longer languid with sleep: it’s tight as a drawn bow. Lexa pushes strands of the girl's hair out of her mouth and sits half up. There's just enough light in the tent to see the gleam of Clark's eyes.

“This isn't Anya's tent. What am I _doing here_?

“You fell asleep. You looked uncomfortable on the floor... we moved you to the bed.”

Clark relaxes, but she also pulls back slightly. “Is Anya still here?”

“No. She didn’t want to disturb you.” It's not quite the truth, but it's not a lie either. Lexa doesn't _know_ why Anya didn't take her thrall with her when she left for bed, because Lexa hadn't dared to ask and have Anya change her mind with the reminder. Maybe Anya's gotten soft in the years since Lexa was her Second. And maybe water runs upstream.

Lexa tightens the arm she has around Clark, trying to pull the girl close again, back into sleep. She can’t help noticing the softness of the girls breasts where they brush against her own, the ridge of Clark’s spine, pressing into her palm. 

Clarke resists the pressure, sits up instead. Seely, always a light sleeper, is poking her head out from behind the screen, fumbling to light a lamp. 

“I should go back,” Clark says, clambering over Lexa in the sudden flare of light. Clark notices her bare legs and frowns down at them, shivering, looking for where Seely has put her trousers. 

Lexa scrambles up herself and yanks the top blanket off the bed, drapes it around the girl’s shoulders. “Anya knows you are here. She’s not going to be angered by your absence.”

Clark bites her lip, still frowning, but she’s reaching up to clutch the blanket closed, and has put her trousers back on the stool. Lexa smiles reasurance. “It’s hours until dawn; Anya would not be pleased to have her sleep disturbed by your return. Come, the bed is soft and warm. Lie back now, and wait for morning.”

 

The girl has just sunk onto the edge of the bed when the entry flap opens. Lexa looks up, shocked at the intrusion, as Gustus ushers in the healers’ apprentice -- Derek? Deekan? But the young man is ignoring Lexa completely, scurrying over to crouch next to Clark. 

“One of the women has started bleeding again, Clarke. Hosifmari doesn’t know what to do. We’re massaging her stomach like you said but…. she’s lost a lot of blood, she’s getting cold-- why aren’t you in your tent? You need to come fast.”

Clarke is already standing again, fumbling her way into her trousers. She’s still hopping into her second boot, untied laces flapping, when she takes off at a run. 

 

Once it’s actually properly morning, Lexa summons her captains to stand before her as she eats her breakfast. “Some of these little villages have healers, yes? I want four of them brought here within the next two days.”

She sends a rider hurtling off to Polis, too. Titus has always wanted to hoard the best and the brightest in the city itself, thinks that the outflung villages can go hang, but Lexa _will_ have an experienced family-healer in her camp until the evacuation is complete. After that, they can start implementing a proper training program. 

 

And when Clarke finally comes back to her tent for dinner-- a full three days later, after they've burned the dead women's body, with all the honors due to one who fell in the fight to bring life to the Twelve Clans, and her daughter passed between the two other new mothers whenever she started to fuss and cry -- Anya is carrying a string bag that holds the girl's few things.

“You are to be Heda's bedwarmer,” Anya informs Clarke sternly. Lexa stares at the flickering lamp, pretending obliviousness to the conversation, to the anxious confusion on the girl’s face. “It’s getting colder now, so you will offer Heda the heat of your body. I will tell Lida and Hosifmari that this is now among your duties. They will not keep you overnight, or summon you unless there is an emergency that no one else can handle.”

Clarke nods, dazed. Lexa suppresses the surge of delight she feels to see the girl accepting the new role, not offering even a token protest. 

 

That night, Clarke gets into bed first. When Lexa is ready, she tells Clarke to move over and claims the pre-warmed blankets for herself. Then she pulls the girl close, drapes an arm around her back, and tries to fall asleep. 

Clarke drops off almost immediately; slow, whuffling breaths halfway to snores, hot and damp where her face is buried in Lexa’s neck. Lexa can feel her heartbeat, slow and steady as a funeral drum.

Lexa stays awake for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning for all readers: this cozy comfortableness is being built up to heighten the angst for a major *whump* in the next chapter or two. I have an opinion on major power imbalances and it is that they always make problems


	8. Chapter 8

A new rhythm, a new normality:

Clarke still spends her days in the healing tent. 

Every morning, she walks to her work amid the sleepy hush of the awakening camp, while the sun hangs, huge and blazing-red, just above the tree-line. When she leaves in the evening, the world is already plunged into cold purple twilight. 

On bad days, Clarke stays in the healing tent long after true dark. Then her hands are painfully cold on the walk back, kept free of her pockets in case she trips and needs to catch herself from falling. 

Clarke walks slow, after nightfall. She walks careful, down rough, uneven pathways, littered with ruts and stones and stubborn clumps of grass. The radiance of torches, camp-fires, and the dim glow of lantern-lit tents make periodic beads of light, a shining necklace strung on a rope of shadows and darkness. 

The surrounding woods are loud at night in a way that Clarke doesn’t notice otherwise, rustling leaves, the creaking sighs of wind tossed branches, the hoot-hoot of owls. 

 

On good days, when there’s time to pause from working while the midday meal is still hot, Lida chivies Clarke and Deklan to take their steaming bowls of stew and their chunks of chewy, sour, crisp edged bread outside to eat.

Deklan complies happily but Clarke always hesitates, until Lida is thoroughly exasperated with her: “Go get some sun on your skin, girl! You need more color in your cheeks. Go, go, begone with you! I don’t want to see neither hide nor hair coming through the doorflap until this candle has burned a half-mark.” 

 

It’s cold outside everyday now, even in the early afternoon. Usually the only parts of Clarke uncovered to the sunlight, as she and Deklan perch on the nearest boulder in comfortable silence, are her hands and face. 

Sometimes, though, when it’s just a few degrees warmer and the sky is a clear bright blue, Clarke unpins her cloak and loosens the laces at the neck of her shirt. She leans back on her hands and enjoys the flickering red glow of sunlight through her closed eyelids, the faint radiance burning warm on her neck and her collarbones, her sternum and the swell of her breasts. 

 

Clarke resolutely ignores the fact that she does this basking on a well-traveled pathway. She focuses on the sounds of the birds, the far off clatters from the smithy, the scents of smoke and horses, cooking food and the faint whiff of the latrines. She pretends not to hear the footfalls of Grounders walking past, witnesses to her hedonistic surrender. 

 

Even with all the UV-B radiation that she has been exposed to since her arrival on the ground, Clarke’s skin does not freckle. 

Bellamy’s does. It’s a marvel to see the friendly little dots appearing on his nose and cheekbones, darker and more numerous every day. Monroe freckles too, much more than Bellamy, but that’s less unexpected considering her coloring, her red hair-- Monroe had a few freckles the day the Dropship came down, just from standard heliotherapy. 

Sterling, Finn, Murphy, and Raven don’t freckle much either. Their skin just darkens, almost imperceptibly -- they _tan_. Clarke seems to be staying as pale as ever, but when she grouses about it, Raven _insists_ that there are a few sun-lightened streaks in Clarke’s hair. 

Sunburn is not a concern now, as fall deepens towards winter. Clarke reminders herself to be aware to avoid it come next summer, though, or if true winter's snowfall is ever thick and white enough to be dazzlingly, dangerously reflective.

 

The newly arrived village healers-- hedge-healers, Lida calls them, or sometimes, by accident, “hedge-witches,” and Hosifmari always laughs and volleys back that they are “yerberos, hueseros, parteras -- curanderas, not brujas!”-- the hedge healers promise to teach Clarke how to make an ointment against sunburn. 

 

That’s a promise as yet unkept, but thanks to their tutelage Clarke _is_ undergoing a thorough apprenticeship in all the midwifery she _hadn’t_ learned on the Ark. 

The Grounders don’t have surgical tools or carefully hoarded vials of pills, but the hedge-healers know herbs and plants and the vagaries of labor and women’s bodies to a degree Clarke is not sure she will ever be able to master. 

Clare wonders if the woman who’d died of a postpartum hemorrhage might have survived, if she had delivered even a few days later. 

Maybe. 

But maybe not. Women died in childbirth on the Ark, despite all of Abby’s efforts-- women died from labor on _Old Earth_ , with all the medical marvels their ancestors had at their command, just less frequently. And Clarke doesn’t even know which of many potential factors caused that bleeding. She had carefully checked and is certain the placenta was delivered complete, at least, but -- a failure of uterine contraction, placenta acreta, vaginal lacerations… there are so many possible causes, and some of them likely beyond even the hedge-healers’ considerable skill. 

 

Clarke still spends her days in the healing tent, but she sleeps every night in Heda’s bed. 

The Grounders all treat this as normal. 

No one, not even Deklan, not even the twelve-year-old boy who brings them lunch every day, who looks for every opportunity to tease and smirk and giggle, has twitted Clarke over this new role as the news spread. 

Despite the fact that Clarke is more and more certain that Heda is one of those women who is attracted to other women, not men. 

Clarke is Heda’s _bedwarmer_ in a literal sense, and it is an honorable duty just the same as her time in the healing tent. Apparently, astoundingly, there is no implicit sexual connotation. 

Clarke tries desperately to think of it as normal, too. 

 

Heda’s bed is much softer and warmer than the bedroll Clarke shared with Raven and Murphy, which was always hard from lying flush on the ground and usually damp from it, too. 

With Heda, Seely makes sure that Clarke has _hot water_ and sweet smelling soaps to wash herself with every morning and night-- and if Clarke comes back from the healing tent especially sweat soaked or splattered or otherwise disgusting, Seely arranges for Clarke to have a full bath, with no rush and as much time spent soaking as she’d like, before she climbs into Heda’s clean bed. 

In Anya’s tent, Clarke had appreciated the press of Raven and Murphy’s sleeping bodies, the physical proof of their surviving presence, solid and warm against her sides, but she likes the way that Heda cuddles her close, too. She likes burying her face in Heda’s neck, mouth half open against Heda’s collarbone, the weight of Heda’s arm where it drapes across her back. 

Heda is a calm sleeper, silent and still all through the night, and Raven and Murphy were both prone to nightmares. 

 

Clarke has bad dreams too. More often than not. More than one in a night, even. 

 

Clarke has dreams of her father’s death. Wells’ death. She never saw the Ark exploding in the sky, but her sleeping mind imagines Abby’s last moments as often as it revisits the memory of Charlotte running over that cliff. 

Then there is the one where the Hundred hang Murphy and this time Bellamy doesn’t let him down until he’s strangled, dead. 

There is a whole constellation of bad dreams based on the escape from the Mountain. The carts of corpses and the Reapers and the tunnels and the plunge into the river. Sometimes, Clarke escapes but Anya doesn’t. Sometimes, the Mountain Men catch them both and take them back. Sometimes, the Hundred are standing among the Mountain Men, and Clarke’s former compatriots’ faces are just as cold and filled with hate. 

For variation: Clarke dreams of the look in Lincoln’s eyes as they’d tortured him, the crack of the whip and her own voice urging Bellamy on. Atom dying beneath her hand, Tris passing beyond the reach of her medical skills... 

Worst of all, though: the dreams where she’s back in the Sky Box, where she has never left it at all, and all the wonders and horrors of the ground were just hallucinations. Or the dream where she wakes up, alone and encaged, again, in the white room at the center of the Mountain, and this time they never let her go free. 

 

In Heda’s tent, Clarke emerges from nightmares to the feeling of a strong hand rubbing circles on her back, the gleam of Heda’s eyes in the darkness. Heda pulls Clarke back in, when Clarke starts to settle and reflexively edge away, and kisses the top of Clarke’s head. Heda doesn’t scold her for the disturbance, the way that Anya did, when Raven or Murphy or Clarke’s tossing and whimpering would disturb her sleep. 

 

Actually: Heda doesn’t scold at all. 

 

In every encounter that Clarke has witnessed, Heda is always calm-voiced and level. Except Clarke can tell, by the way that the other Grounders react, that Heda’s implacable evenness is sometimes its own threat. 

 

Clarke worries over making mistakes and not realizing them until it’s too late. With grumpy Anya, there were plenty of warning signs, and it was easy to back off, to reassess, and so avoid true danger. 

Clarke has not gotten herself in trouble with Heda. Yet. 

 

Anya is still Clarke's-- still the one who holds her collar. Clarke remains confused as to _exactly_ what that relationship-term _means_ , but when Deklan worms it out of Clarke, that she misses spending time with Murphy and Raven, that a part of her feels achingly lonely and isolated now that her evenings belong exclusively to Heda, Deklan tells her-- “Your nights are what are Heda's, not all the lamplit hours before sleep, and even those are only a loan. _Anya_ is the one who holds your collar. Why don’t you appeal to her?”

Clarke frowns at the suggestion. “Are you saying I should…. tell Anya I don't want to sleep in Heda's bed?”

Deklan flinches, turns almost green. 

“No! Don’t tell her that. Actually. Don’t say anything.”

 

But when they enter the healing tent after lunch, Deklan pulls Lida aside for a private word. 

Clarke can feel their eyes on her throughout that conversation. 

After a few minutes, Lida smiles at Deklan and clasps his shoulder and, gliding past three or four questions, manages to slip outside. When Lida returns an hour or so later, she looks as satisfied as one of the camp cats with blood still on its muzzle, before she realizes just how much chaos the tent has devolved into in her absence and immediately devotes herself to restoring order. 

 

Clarke’s vague suspicion of what Deklan and Lida may have done -- done for her! Done just because Clarke was unhappy! -- turns to a near certainty when Anya frowns, not entirely convincingly, as Clarke presents herself in front of Heda’s tent. 

Anya is not inside chatting and eating with Heda, the way she has been every other night. Instead, Anya lingers outside, making awkward conversation with Heda’s guard, the gigantic, patient Gustus. 

Almost as if Anya had been deliberately waiting to intercept Clarke. 

 

“Do you go to bed this early every night, now that you’re Heda’s bedwarmer? I always knew you were lazy, but this, Clarke! I have never even heard of such indolence.”

Clarke doesn’t flinch at the cruel words, because Anya’s disapproval sounds faked. And Clarke contributes during both her waking and her sleeping hours, now. Anya can’t actually believe what she’s saying. The scolding is just meant to remind Clarke of the difference in power, the distance between them. 

Indeed, Anya continues: “I didn’t order you here tonight, Clarke. When I don’t give you orders, your time is your own between the healing tent and sleep. Do you think you are so essential to the fight against the Mountain that I want you here unsent for, every night? Go away now, and find someone whose appetite will not be spoiled by the sight of your face.”

Clarke freezes stockstill while she processes the reprieve. Then she wheels around and takes off into the twilight at a near-run.

 

Fifty metres on, she trips on a stone and sprawls flat. When she clambers back to her feet and glances over her shoulder, she can see that Heda has joined Anya and Gustus outside of her tent, and that they are all watching Clarke. Heda’s mouth is opening, her arm is stretching out as if she’s going to call Clarke back to her. 

Clarke lurches forward and pretends she’s too far away to hear the faint shout. Her trousers are ripped across the knee, now, and the cold air soon chills the hot wet blood that is rising up from her bruised and broken skin. The heel of her right hand palm is bloody too, and stuck with grit and dirt. 

Clarke holds that hand out and to the side as she hurries on, so that the blood will drip onto the ground and not onto her shirt. The trousers are already a loss. 

 

The Hundred’s campfire is not like Clarke remembers. 

Octavia is not present, she’s off at Indra’s hearth-circle, and that’s not new-- but Bellamy is missing too, apparently having joined his sister for the evening.

Raven and Murphy are seated distinctly together, on the opposite side of the fire from Finn and Stirling, and Monroe appears to be torn between the two pairs. 

Murphy is sewing beads and feathers and little carved bone tokens onto what Clarke recognizes as Anya’s best leather vest. 

Clarke is very sure that Anya has not ordered Murphy to do this. Anya cares very little about adornment.

So: Murphy has decided, of his own volition, to do something for someone else. To do something _nice_. 

And when Murphy mentions Anya by name, later in the evening -- he reminds Clarke of Seely or Gustus speaking of Heda. It’s the same possessive loyalty, the same fierce pride. 

 

Raven doesn’t share Murphy’s new devotion, mostly looks amused by it. But Raven herself spends most of Clarke’s visit locked in discussion with a Grounder man who is not wearing weapons, who sees Raven in the circle as he walks past and veers over to pick up what seems to be an ongoing debate about how to go about diverting the flow of some great river. 

The river that powers Mount Weather’s turbines, Clarke realizes slowly. _Well_. _That_ is a _very interesting_ thought, although Clarke shares Raven’s doubt as to its feasibility.

 

On the other side of the fire, Finn and Stirling are brooding and near-silent. They are not adapting to the new normal _at all_.

 

“Why did you leave Mount Weather?” Stirling bursts out, finally, and Clarke stares at him in shock that he even considers that a question.

 

There have been ten more Reapers brought to the healing tent for attempted detox since Lincoln was declared a success. Three are still alive. 

 

Clarke remembers the days-long weeping of the second man Lida and Hosifmari treated. She remembers his guilt stricken confession, the day before he snuck down to the river and drowned himself. 

 

After becoming a Reaper, he had gone straight to his brother’s holdings. 

His brother’s family lived a little ways away from the village and they were vulnerable, easy pickings. 

He had Harvested his brother and his brother’s wife, his stripling nephew and his adolescent niece. 

He’d left the younger children alone, because the Mountain did not want them so small. Left them on their own in the winter, several kilometres from the village, with no adults to care for or guide them. 

There are warriors in the camp from his old village, so he had learned that the bodies of his young nieces and nephews were discovered half starved and frozen solid, when someone from the village finally went out to investigates the holding’s long silence. 

His brother and his brother’s wife and his older niece and nephew had perished too, drained dry inside Mount Weather’s medical bay. That’s a certainty, that none of them have somehow survived : he had seen all of their bodies, one by one, half buried amid the other corpses. 

 

What Clarke would like, most of all, is to go back to that first day on the ground, and for no spear to hit Jasper. She would like to be alone in this strange new world, or at least to approach the Grounders in peace and as equals, as allies. 

 

Being taken as a captive, being made a thrall, it’s cost Clarke her dignity and her liberty. The Grounders have stolen her _freedom_ , her self-determination, her choice. 

But if Clarke had sided with the Mountain, had colluded in their barbaric ontology-- that would have cost Clarke her very _self_.

 

Better to wear a collar among the Grounders than to be fed chocolate cake by people who have blinded themselves to the extent of their own monstrosity. 

When Clarke tries to explain all of this to Stirling and Finn, though, they are stone faced and silent.They don’t argue with her, but its clear that they don’t really agree, either. 

Monroe looks back and forth, anxious, and Clarke finds herself scooting over to voluntarily talk to _Murphy_ instead. 

 

Clarke leaves the fire and heads back to Heda’s tent much earlier than she’d planned. 

Her injured hand seems to be throbbing in pain with every beat of her heart. Her knees are bruised, and crusty with dried blood, and the rips in the fabric of her pants are sending cold air gusting along her skin. 

Since she forgot to stop by the cook tent to pick up a portion, and the Hundred were not actually expecting her to join them, all she’s eaten since midday is the last few bites of Murphy’s stew-over-grain. He’d surprised her again by offering to share after he realized she was unprovided for.

And Clarke has gone far longer than seven or eight hours without food, many times, but that was when her stomach was used to irregular meals -- now it has expectations, and her body had begun insulin production and dropped blood glucose in preparation. Which is all to say that she is cranky, and feels like she is starving. 

 

And maybe its just all this physical discomfort but she also feels sick, sick in her -- in her heart, in her metaphorical _soul_ , after witnessing Finn and Stirling's ethical indifference. 

 

In Heda's tent, Seely clucks over Clarke's bedraggled appearance. She binds Clarke's hand and her knees and dresses her in soft, clean clothing. She has Gustus send off a messenger to fetch Clarke some bread and some cheese. 

Anya and Heda and two of the Grounder captains are still sitting at the cleared table in the front of the tent, drinking small cups of strong liquor and arguing over a map. 

Clarke is sure that she can feel Heda's gaze burning into her, although every time Clarke turns to look, Heda is engaged in conversation. 

 

Clarke proves Anya's earlier criticisms right, to her vague embarrassment. She crawls into bed as soon as Seely declares her ministrations finished, and drifts between dozing and half-awake until the tent finally empties out.. 

Clarke comes fully alert in darkness, as Heda carefully slides into bed beside her. When Heda turns towards her, Clarke moves into the embrace eagerly, greedily. After a moment, she reaches her own arm out, curls it around Heda's waist, so that she is holding the other woman in return.


	9. Chapter 9

Anya stares at her thralls.

On any other morning, she would still be lost to sleep, and Ravin and Murphi too. But it’s not a normal morning. 

Clarke, who works the longest days of all of them, was already up and eating breakfast when the messenger Anya had sent arrived at Lexa’s doorflap with summons. So maybe it’s just the slant of the shadows cast by the lantern-- but even Clarke looks drowsy. 

 

Last night, Ravin rasped the whetstone up and down Anya’s great-sword until the edges were gleaming lines of light. This morning, Ravin finished giving the same treatment to every knife that Anya owns.

Clarke and Murphi have helped Anya to dress and ready herself. They have laced and buckled so that every piece of her metal-and-leather armor is balanced and tight enough to avoid slippage, but not so tight that it limits her range of motion. They draped her sword sling over her shoulder and across her back, first under her cloak and then over it, although her sword itself will travel strapped to her saddlebags. As Ravin finished sharpening each knife, Clarke and Murphi matched gleaming blade to sheath, then attached them to Anya’s belt and her wrists, the outside of her ankles and the inside of her thighs. 

Ravin gingerly balanced the clay pot of wax-and-oil over the embers in the brazier and then, under Anya’s instruction, carefully dripped the resulting liquid into the black powder. 

Murphi dropped to his knees in front of Anya and held the polished mirror over his head, adjusting it to just correct angle so that she could paint her face. Ravin and Clarke had been quiet and still, then, watching her, seeming to understand the solemnity of that moment. 

 

The mirror is back in its pouch, but Anya can picture her own appearance: she bristles with the fierceness of the most dangerous of Trikru warriors. Her thralls, kneeling before her, present a clear contrast. 

Ravin and Murphi were woken by Anya’s shaking hand and immediately yawned their way into action. They have not attended to their own needs at all; their clothing is still deeply wrinkled and half askew. Ravin’s hair is barely braided, more strands hanging loose than not, and the corners of Murphy’s eyes are crusty with sleep. 

Clarke, who always gets up long before dawn, surely left Lexa’s tent looking tidy and neat, but the freezing drizzle she walked through on her way to Anya's has left wet patches of darkness on her shoulders and the breast of her cloak. And while Clarke's hair was surely combed smooth and tightly twisted when Seely pinned the braids around her head a candlemark ago, that same drizzle means that wisps are already pulling free, glowing like a corona in the lantern light and gently curling at Clarke's temples and hairline. 

 

Anya’s thralls, the three of them. Clarke, Murphi, Ravin. Each of them soft, and needy, and astoundingly stubborn. Her thralls: unwanted, unasked for, but here now, hers now, all the same. 

 

Anya remembers the solitude of a tent entirely to herself, in the years between Lexa leaving her guidance and Tris entering it, after she was promoted to a rank where she was no longer expected to bunk in with her warriors. 

Tris’s body has been given to the fire, her supplies long since returned for redistribution, but even at a glance it’s clear that Anya’s tent again holds multiple inhabitants. 

 

Ravin and Murphi’s spare clothing dangles in a string bag tied to the tentpole, out of the way and far above the damp ground. 

Ravin and Murphi’s boots are lined up neatly in the corner, more worn than Anya’s-- and Clarke’s, too, Seely had taken Lexa’s off-handed order to ensure that Heda’s bedwarmer was respectably attired and exploited it for every possible hair’s breadth of latitude in her arguments with the supply master on Clarke’s behalf-- but while their uppers are scuffed and stained, the leather itself is plump and pliant with nightly waxing, thoroughly waterproof, and the soles are new, still too thick for holes. 

Ravin’s carved wooden comb is flat on the little three legged table, although Anya’s finer bone one is missing from the place next to it, already packed away. Murphi goes to the camp barber every third day, has no right to a beard as a thrall but can’t manage to shave without cutting himself; he owns no flat-razor but his toothstick and Ravin’s lie next to the salt pouch, the waterskin and the unglazed washbowl. Ravin and Murphi’s bedroll is still strewn haphazardly across the ground, a tangled coil that takes up half the floor of the tent and that they have all avoided stepping on.

 

Anya thinks about the sight that greeted her this morning when she sat up in bed -- usually, with the pleasure of rank, she is the last in the tent awake. 

Her thralls were a single, misshapen ball under their blankets, pressed so closely together that a thread wouldn't have passed between them. They had every limb pulled into the trunks of their bodies to conserve heat, and they were still trembling, ever so slightly, shivering in their sleep. 

While Ravin never complains, Anya can see that the girl is stiff and sore from sleeping on the hard ground, in the damp cold, with clenched-tight muscles. Ravin gives herself away with the careful deliberateness of her every movement, the way that she sometimes pauses, blankfaced, clearly schooling her features to not betray a wince. Murphi is less afffected but his nose started dripping two days ago, and now his nostrils and his upper lid are chapped and red and flaking.

 

Anya should remember to ask the Supply Master to give her thralls a thicker blanket and a proper, waxed-cotton groundcloth, when she visits in a few moments to pick up her bedroll and rations.

Or maybe she should just tell Ravin and Murphi to sleep in her bed, while she is gone away. And then she might as well have them stay there after she returns. 

 

Lexa is sensible, taking Clarke in beside her every night -- shared heat saves on fuel, the word "fuel" meaning both precious charcoal in the brazier and meat and grain in the stomach. Considering the trouble of transporting supplies to a camp this size, this far from any good roads, the food is nearly as valuable as the coal. 

 

Arranging warmer sleeping arrangements for her thralls is not the only duty Anya has risked neglecting. 

 

She’d almost rode away from camp without a plan for them, without assigning them to a temporary keeping.

Anya is lucky that she’d woken in the middle of the night from a funny dream in which Murphi’s sharp tongue had stabbed and cut at a warrior who looked astoundingly like Tristan. Tristan is long gone back to Delphi, thank goodness, but if any of Anya’s thralls make trouble while she is gone, or end up in trouble not of their own making -- or if she dies and never returns -- she must ensure that they will be the clear responsibility of someone high enough in the hierarchies to ensure their care and protection. 

And that really leaves only one choice. 

 

“Heda will hold your collars on my behalf, until I am returned to camp,” Anya tells them now.

Clarke hardly reacts, sanguine and unsurprised at the announcement, but Ravin’s eyes narrow and Murphi’s mouth opens in immediate protest. 

“Will we have to sleep in Heda’s tent, with Clarke, while you are gone, then?

“No,” Anya shakes her head. “You will still sleep here, and continue on as usual. It should be only a formality. If all goes well, I will be back before the moon is dark and then round again, and there won't be many changes happening in that time.”

 

If all goes well. 

 

Anya is riding off at the head of a band of warriors which includes all three of the former Reapers who are not Lincoln. 

Lincoln was snared by Indra so quickly that he has little knowledge of the tunnels, but the other once-Reapers remember every twist and turn.

 

Anya’s band is going to collapse the roofs of that cave network everywhere they can, and station guards where they cannot.

They are going to pick off the Maunon’s drugged Reapers one by one, capture or kill, whichever is more convenient, as rehabilitation has proved possible but far from a sure bet. 

 

The Twelve Clans cannot lay siege to the Mountain in the usual way. They tried that, in the long ago battle of the Mountain, but even ignoring the acid fog, the Maunon have water, they grow their own food -- there are few reasons for them to leave their fastness. But the Maunon do need the healthy bodies that the Reapers bring, they need the Twelve Clans’ healing blood, and Lexa is determined to cut off that supply. 

 

It’s beyond risky. 

Ravin has taught Anya and her warriors how to identify the charms the Maunon place in the woods and the tunnels, the charms that act as their distant eyes and ears.

Bellami had surprised everyone by going to Indra with advice on how Anya’s warriors might hide themselves from the sight of the charms, when they are inconveniently present. Unlike a person, the charms can see just as well in darkness as in light, but they are easily blinded by drifting smoke, or mist, or even clouds of dust. 

 

They are not to disable the charms, Lexa has ordered, and they are not to be seen. So Anya’s warriors will carry smudge pots everywhere they go, as if it was high summer and they need billows of smoke to discourage mosquitoes. 

 

The Maunon have tricked and terrified the Twelve Clans for fifty years, Lexa had said, when some of Anya’s captains protested the decision to leave the monitoring charms in place.

Now it is the Twelve Clans’ turn to repay the favor. 

 

Their Reapers will leave and never come back, and they will _not know why_ , not even know if they are under threat or if the losses are simply bad luck and coincidence. 

 

If the Maunon send their own people to investigate… well, Anya believes, now, that even a white-clad magician will fall like any member of the Twelve Clans if one of her warriors can place an arrow in his eye. Her bowmen agree with her, and they are, every one of them, eager to put that theory to the test. 

 

In the past, the Maunon have deterred this sort of attack on their magicians by retaliating to any injury with the summons of screaming _rah-kets_ that burn nearby villages to the ground. 

But now, thanks to Lexa’s foresight, every tiny grouping of huts, every pig-pen and meeting house within an eighty mile radius-- every one of the villages that together make up the Maunon’s favorite targets, locations that they have long ago mapped and plugged into their _gai-dance sis-tems_ \-- stands empty. What really matters from the villages, the people and the livestock and the most valuable supplies, has long since been sent off marching to other clans in far off lands. And this war camp is new. The Maunon do not know where they'd need to aim their _rah-kets_ to hit it, and the scouts thick in the woods are doing their best to ensure that they never will.

 

There are only three hundred Maunon, Clarke says. 

 

Clarke destroyed three hundred of the Twelve Clans’ warriors in the ring of fire, but the Twelve Clans were not crippled by that loss. 

The Twelve Clans have many, many other fighters, and all the villages in the coalition to recruit more from.

 

With only three hundred Maunon in total, every loss will be a devastating tragedy, a decrease in available knowledge and skill that the Maunon can ill afford. 

Anya is looking forward to getting started.  


***

  
Lexa had not wanted to let Anya ride away.

The last time Anya went into battle, Lexa spent several days thinking her First was dead.

But Heda can no more order one of her War Band leaders to stay in camp for personal, rather than strategic, reasons than she could have forbidden Costia from scouting along Azgeda’s border.

Costia died. Lexa must hope that Anya does not. 

 

With Anya gone, Ravin and Murfi have regained autonomy during the half candle-mark in the morning when they would have been attending to Anya’s needs.

Somehow, they have ended up allocating this freed time to taking on the duties of the kitchen helper who carried the breakfast tray to Heda’s tent. 

 

Lexa is the last out of bed in the morning, waiting snug under the covers until Seely has gotten the flames in the braziers blazing, until the air in the tent has warmed to an almost comfortable temperature. 

Clarke slides out of bed as soon as she hears the rustles of Seely dressing, and Lexa, who rouses at the draft of cold this lets in, has come to enjoy lying alone in bed, still half asleep, listening to the sounds of her handmaiden and her bedwarmer going about their morning routine.

 

They murmur to each other quietly, thinking that Lexa is still dead to the world and trying to avoid waking her. 

Lexa can only make out half their words but it is always pleasant talk -- good mornings and “did you sleep wells,” Clarke passing the spark box to Seely, Seely’s murmured thanks. Clarke helps Seely with laying out Lexa’s clothing to warm in front of the fire, and Seely crouches to aid Clarke in easing on her snug leather boots. Clarke combs and rebraids her own hair while Seely dresses, and Seely pins Clarke’s braids up and lets her know that the wash water is perfectly hot, if Clarke will swing the kettle off the fire and pour it into the basin immediately. 

Clarke sits down on her little pillow in the corner and eats steadily when breakfast arrives, and Seely dishes out Lexa’s greater spread carefully, filling the table with all the bowls of optional add-ins, the slivers of dried meat and salted fish, the honey and nuts and fruit spreads, that are among Heda’s many privileges. 

It used to be, this was the point when Lexa would yawn and stretch and “wake up,” just as Clarke was dashing out of the tent. Half of the time Lexa was too late to even get the flash of Clarke’s smile, Clarke's over-the-shoulder shouted good morning-- but before Anya rode away Lexa had begun experimenting with showing herself awake earlier and earlier, such as when Gustus carried in the breakfast tray.

“I’ll have mine plain today,” Lexa told Seely that first morning, “and Clarke, you come and eat yours here, beside me. It’s still too cold in this tent to sit up above the blankets alone.”

 

And Seely had not hesitated at the change in plan. She had not frowned, she had not knitted her eyebrows together or gone quiet. Seely had bustled like always and smiled at the sight of Clarke munching away, tucked under Lexa’s arm. Clarke, for her own part, seemed as delighted to eat plain porridge sitting in bed as she was to eat it out of it, although Lexa cannot imagine how Clarke stomachs the thought of plain porridge, every morning, day in and day out, without interruption. 

 

Freed from the threat of incorrect action that would have presented itself in Seely’s disapprobation, Lexa could hold her arms out every morning, pretend to shiver, and, within a few heartbeats, without fail be rewarded with a bright eyed, fresh faced, quiveringly-alert Clarke settling trustingly back into her embrace. 

The sweetness of Clarke’s warm, firm-soft body pressed against Lexa’s own, the little half sentences of her morning conversation, chit chat about the weather and Clarke’s patients and her expectations for the coming day-- this more than made up for the loss of fruit and honey.

 

But now, with the breakfast tray carried over by Murfi and Ravin, Clarke takes her portion and slips outside to eat in their company. Lexa can hear their voices through the fabric of the tent, not the words themselves but the rise and fall of conversation, before they split off and go their separate ways. 

Alone at the table, Lexa stirs honey into her porridge peevishly, listening to the thunk of the spoon against the wooden bowl, and resents Ravin and Murfi with a mighty vengeance.

 

Lexa has given up Clarke’s presence over dinner, too. Anya’s leavetaking was the culmination of every conversation that had come before, where they had turned to Clarke and asked for an explanation of some strange thing that they wondered about the Mountain, about the working of the Maunon’s magic. 

Anya has left because they had mined every morsel of information from her and Clarke’s collective memory of their time under the earth and come up with a plan to put it all into action. Clarke cannot be expected to contribute further until Anya returns with new details for Clarke to consult on. 

 

And it would be awkward to sit alone at the table with Clarke crouched on her cushion in the corner, but it would be awkwarder still to seat Clarke, a collared thrall, at the table beside Heda. 

 

And Lexa is very aware that she _holds Clarke’s collar in her keeping_. She must act as a neutral guardian of Clarke’s wellbeing and Anya’s interests, not as an idiot who is dazed by way that Clarke's narrow waist flares into the fullness of her hips, entangled in the wry sadness that lurks in the corner of Clarke's easy smile. Lexa wants to kiss Clarke until that sadness goes away, and she _cannot, cannot, cannot_.

So Lexa tells Clarke to join her fellows every night at their campfire for dinner. 

 

Sometimes Clarke stays gone until bedtime. But other times, like tonight, Clarke comes back early. 

The first few such evenings, Seely had hesitated with her hand on the second glazed mug, waited for Lexa’s nod before she poured Clarke her own portion of the hot spiced wine.

Now Seely measures out the steaming dram as Clarke trades damp boots for warm dry socks, and Clarke wraps her cold fingers around the hot mug and breathes in the steam and hums appreciatively. 

Lexa has given Clarke one of the tally slates for her own use, likes to watch Clarke’s concentration, on these early evenings, over her drawing, but tonight Clarke’s hands are empty. 

 

Seely is standing behind Lexa, combing out her hair, and Lexa has directed Clarke to sit on the ground in front of Lexa’s chair so that she can do the same to Clarke. 

Clarke’s hair does not tangle half as badly as Lexa’s, and so Lexa has it neat and rebraided with plenty of time. It isn’t really a thought, the way that Lexa’s thumbs settle on the nape of Clarke’s neck, start drawing circles.  


***

  
Clarke knows from conversations with Seely that in _Polis_ , the Grounders’ city, there are many handmaidens who serve Heda, not just one. And just like in camp, in Polis the handmaidens attend Heda even in sleep. They spend the night in her bedchamber, tucked barely behind screens and hanging curtains, able to hear every sound and spring up at a moment’s notice if they are needed. And that’s not even mentioning Gustus, who, in the supposed safety of Heda’s tower, apparently still sleeps stretched across her doorway.

Clarke knows from conversations overheard throughout the camp that Heda had a longtime lover, one Costia, who was killed by the Azgeda as one of their last atrocities before they surrendered and joined the conclave. Costia was liked well enough for her own sake, but she was loved for the fact that she was loved by the Twelve -- eleven, then-- Clans’ beloved Heda. The agony of Costias' death, the torture and dishonorable treatment, is still a cherished resentment. 

Clarke tries to combine these two facts into one. Either Heda and Costia and the handmaidens were all past the point of shame, or Heda and Costia had bee very good at vanishing even from Gustus’s oversight in search of privacy, and creative at getting by without access to a bed. 

 

Clarke is thinking about this because Seely is only a few feet away, standing behind Heda who sits behind Clarke, and Clarke is finding herself wishing, desperately, that Seely would disappear. 

 

Heda’s hands have been moving over Clarke’s skin, pressing and rubbing and kneading, for an impossible eternity. First they’d massaged the back of Clarke’s neck and then her shoulders. Clarke had allowed herself to let out little half audible breaths at the feeling of Heda’s hands, to gasp and sigh with appreciation-- because this was the same thing Clarke used to do for Abby, after her mother spent a long day in surgery. A neck massage is not an inherently sexual act. 

And Clarke had been so sure that Heda would stop after that, once Clarke's shoulders were done, or else that she would tell Clarke to lean forward, to brace herself on her knees, and begin the journey down the ridges of Clarke’s spine.

 

Instead: Heda stayed silent and her hands just shifted forward, working the muscle that lay tight beneath Clarke’s collarbone. 

Then Heda’s hands drifted in and up, stroked gently, again and again, down the front of Clarke’s throat. 

 

Clarke stoppered her noises at that point, because she wanted to move from the little breathy sighs into half-moans, and she knew those wouldn’t have been appropriate. Heda was _Heda_ , and even if Clarke was ready to ignore that fact, _Seely_ was standing right there. 

Clarke could just about manage to keep herself silent, but she couldn’t stop herself from shivering, as Heda’s hands moved down slightly. As Heda's hands began a slow journey, spread fingers dragging horizontally, working their way down Clarke’s sternum.

And yes, Clarke does have pectoral muscles, although they’re not particularly tight or sore. There's some vague justification that can still be offered for the placement of Heda's hands. 

And Heda is not touching Clarke’s breasts, not at all. 

But she is coming so close that Clarke thinks she can feel the heat radiating off Heda’s skin every time her hands sweep past. Heda has undone the top laces of Clarke’s shirt and she is running her fingers down into Clarke’s cleavage, following the line of Clarke’s breastbone, millimeters from curving flesh, and all Clarke wants is for those fingers to fan straight out, rather than up, when they begin their departing journey. 

Except that Seely is standing behind Heda who is seated behind Clarke, and if either of them look down they are going to see how Clarke’s nipples are pushing determinedly even through the thick draping fabric of her shirt.

 

Clarke wants Heda’s hands to move sideways, to cup Clarke’s breasts and roll the tight buds of Clarke's nipples between Heda's firm callused fingers. Clarke wants Heda’s hands to slide down over the curve of her stomach and into her pants, to rub against her slickness and press firmly on her clit and thrust in and out of her body. She wants--

 

There are voices at the front of the tent, and Heda’s hands are now demurely resting on Clarke’s shoulders. But at least they aren’t still, they are still drawing little circles.

Then Gustus’s head and torso surges through the curtainway, he is gesturing that Heda should join him outside of the tent, and Heda’s nails dig into Clarke’s skin so hard that Clarke almost yelps, before Heda lets go and rises. Heda's hair is loose and shining and it sways behind her, down almost to her waist, as she walks away. 

 

Gustus bothering Heda after dinner cannot be anything good.

 

Clarke thinks of Anya, of the messenger sent back every fifth-day. The most recent arrived this afternoon, shared news and had a meal, changed horses and rode back out to rejoin Anya’s party at their next planned destination. Can something have gone so drastically wrong that Anya would send a second messenger, who must have departed only a few hours after the first?

 

Heda doesn’t come back into the tent.

Two burly warriors do. 

They walk over to Clarke and stand on either side of her, pick her up by the arms and drag her out until she gets her feet under her and can scramble-walk on her own. 

When Clarke manages to turn her head, to look over her shoulder before the curtain closes behind her, Seely's expression is one of shock turning into horror. 

 

Through the curtain, on Clarke’s right, kind, patient Gustus is as solemn and expressionless as a carved statue. 

On Clarke’s left, Heda’s face is a frozen, devastated wasteland. 

 

“What are you doing, why are you taking me, Heda, Heda, _Heda_ \--” Clarke is wailing, there are tears running down her cheeks but the warriors are frog marching her down the dark pathways of the camp and Heda is standing there, letting them.

Clarke is only wearing socks, not even shoes, and she left behind her cloak, and the neck of her shirt is still open and unlaced, and she is cold, and--

 

There’s a square hole cut into the ground, with a trapdoor leading down into it.

Clarke drops into darkness.

 

She’s alone.

 

At least its warmer down here. 

 

But she's alone.

 

Alone and encaged.

 

Again.


	10. Chapter 10

“Indra, Heda,” Gustus announces. “Indra seeks your presence, along with her… her companion.”

Lexa looks up at that phrasing. She has been in a grey fugue ever since the warriors arrived with the news, the terrible news of Mon-ro’s spontaneous confession-- ever since she responded to those revelations by telling the warriors to _take Clarke, and put her in the pit_ , and Lexa can still see the frightened confusion that appeared on Clarke’s face as they’d dragged her away-- and had that been faked?-- and hear Clarke’s voice, pitiful, calling out to Lexa to _save her_ \--but this is unusual enough to catch her attention.

When Indra and her thrall, Oktavia, drop down and press their foreheads to the floor, Lexa understands Gustus’s hesitation. Even in the lamplight its clear that Oktavia’s neck is bare, ringed only by a narrow strip of shiny skin. _Indra’s thrall_ is freed, a thrall no longer. 

 

“This one humbly begs three days leave, Heda,” Indra begins, rising up to her knees. Her voice is low and solemn but, despite the conciliatory phrasing, the muscle in her jaw is jumping like a frog in springtime.

“Why do you wish to depart from this camp, oh Indra, most esteemed and honored War Leader?” Out of confusion, Lexa has retreated to the patterns of austere, conclave-style phrasing. 

Rather than relaxing into informal speech after her first, respectful greeting, Indra’s response continues the ornate address. “This one would travel to the nearest still-occupied village, Heda. This one seeks to present herself before a Council of Elders, and seek their blessing.”

Lexa straightens abruptly, her eyebrows halfway to her hairline at that explanation. It is one thing to uncollar a thrall, which transforms the once bonded into a Freed Outsider. But what Indra seems to be implying...

“This one has found a daughter-of-the-heart in this war-caught captive, Heda. This one would adopt the freed-thrall Octavia, into hearth circle _and_ into the Trikru.”

Lexa nods, dazed. This is a bad time for Indra to be gone, but among the Trikru, only the village elders-- civilian, not military leadership-- hold the power to extend membership in the clan. It’s different for Delphi, Azgeda, Lake People, but Indra is Trikru born and raised and she seems bent on following all the proper forms. 

“Congratulations on the impending expansion of your family, Indra,” Lexa intones by rote. Is that the appropriate phrasing in cases of planned adoption, or only when a subordinate shares the news of a spouse’s pregnancy? Lexa has never dealt with this situation before. 

“You may leave the camp,” Lexa continues. “You are released--” she pictures the sky that afternoon, the eastern horizon glowing with golden clouds, reflecting the light of the descending sun in the western sky. Those clouds will probably drop rain, as they pass overhead, but they could also usher in sleet, even early snow. Lexa imagines clinging mud, slick ice, horses lifting their hooves high enough to clear drifts of frozen white. 

Do the Sky-Fallen even know how to ride? 

 

Anya never said. 

 

The army has not moved since the thralls joined them, but if it did, social customs dictate that the thralls would not be mounted. They would run beside the horses.

Lexa thinks of Clarke’s slender ankles, the tender soles of her feet, blistering from the slide and thump of heavy boots. If the army moves, Lexa would want to swing Clarke up onto the horse before her, she would want to hold Clarke close and sure and safe. If Clarke is the person Lexa thinks her to be. If Clarke was ignorant of Mon-ro and Stir-ling and Fin’s plan. If --

 

Lexa focuses her mind on the fact that Indra _is_ someone who she holds in esteem and honor. Those phrases are not just formalities, they speak the truth. Indra has given her entire adult life to the defense of the Trikru and the Coalition, Indra has never taken a spouse or born or fostered a child. 

And now, Indra is asking just for this, three days, the bare minimum required to ride to the outskirts of the evacuation, observe the rites and ceremonies, and hurry back. No feasting, no storytelling, no time at all for celebrating. “You are released from this camp for _five_ days,” Lexa promises, before she can regret the generosity.

Indra dips into a shallower obeisance, and starts to rise to her feet. Her thra-- her future-daughter is white-faced and cautious as she echoes the movements, seemingly overwhelmed by everything that is occurring. 

 

Lexa thinks of the girl’s brother. Bell-a-mi. Lexa’s own thrall. Last seen with his shirt hanging in tatters, the skin of his muscled back bruised and bleeding from the heavy fall of the lash. Bel-a-mi’s bitten lip, his gasping breath, his refusal to cry out or beg for mercy. 

Bell-a-mi shares a tent with Mon-ro and Fin and Stir-ling. He had to have been aware of the food they were stockpiling, perhaps even the stolen knives. Mon-ro claimed that only Stir-ling, Fin, and herself ever discussed escape, but Bel-a-mi must have had some cognisance of their plans, and he had said nothing. Lexa has only begun his punishment for that omission. 

She doesn’t know how far she’ll go, yet. 

 

She could take Bel-a-mi’s hand, for this, not just order him whipped, and no one would blame her. She could take Mon-ro and Fin and Stir-ling’s hands, or their eyes or their tongues. She could take their lives, even, raise a pole in the center of the camp and tie them to it to die in the agony of a thousand cuts, and everyone would agree that was well justified. 

 

The one defense for Bel-a-mi is that he was as often at Indra’s fire-circle, seeking his sister’s company, as at his own. 

The argument for mercy is that Bel-a-mi has begun learning the History Songs from the camp’s bard, and if Lexa orders his hand separated from his wrist, he won’t be able to properly tap out the accompanying rhythms on the drum. 

The case for leniency is that Bel-a-mi had appeared to be fully invested in the struggle against the Maunon. 

Just as had Ravin. Just as had Clarke. 

 

Clarke and Ravin, and Murfi, they are not Lexa’s thralls. With Anya away and Lexa standing in her place, though, Lexa could have them whipped. She could have them maimed, have them executed, even, if she considered that punishment well-justified. For now she has chosen to simply put Ravin and Murfi in chains, and drop Clarke down, out of sight, into the pit. 

Lexa needs time to think. She needs to forget everything that is already so dear and beloved to her about Clarke, so that she can see the way forward clearly. 

Clarke is so valuable, for her direct experience of the Maunon’s sorcery, first of all, and for her skill with healing a distant second. And Clarke is a clear leader among the thralls. 

Lexa has sent Clarke to Fin and Stirling and Mon-ro’s firecircle every evening for more than half-a-moon. If Clarke had intended to leave with them, and if Mon-ro had stayed silent so that their escape attempt succeeded-- even if they had only stuck to the woods, as Mon-ro claimed they had agreed to test out first, even if they had not given up on solo survival and retreated to the Mountain-- even if the betrayal was only in their escape, not utter, deliberate treason, Clarke is an asset that the Twelve Clans can hardly afford to lose. 

Lexa is Heda, she must act for her people’s interest. She does not _want_ to punish Clarke and she does not trust herself to question Clarke and she cannot risk letting Clarke go free. 

Anya will send another messenger in five days, and if Lexa has that rider return to Anya’s war-band with a summons, it will only be another day or two before Anya herself is in camp. All Lexa needs to do is keep Clarke in the pit and not think about her, and in a week or less Anya will take back responsibility for this decision.

 

Lexa looks at Indra, nearly at the doorflap. Thanks to Bel-a-mi’s guidance about the smoke, Anya’s warriors are all alive, having fooled the Maunon’s charms. 

Bel-a-mi has a rare, wide grin, and freckles on his nose, and even Lexa, who barely pays attention to her own barely-useful thralls, knows that he would never, ever do anything that risks endangering his sister.

“Indra,” Lexa calls out. “In honor of your new daughter, I would give you a gift. The keeping of my own once-thrall, your future-daughter’s brother. You now hold the collar of Bel-a-mi, a fitting replacement for Okatvia’s freedom.”

Indra turns and murmurs acceptance before she strides the last few paces and exits.

Octavia staggers after her. 

The door-flap closes behind them. 

 

The next morning, after sleeping until the sun is high above the horizon and barely eating a late breakfast, Lexa tells the jail-master to take off Ravin’s chains. 

Ravin cannot walk without crutches, she would be a liability in an escape through the woods. 

Lexa will believe that Ravin was kept in ignorance of Fin and Stir-ling and Mon-ro’s plan.

 

In the afternoon, Lexa has Murfi released as well. 

The boy is little liked by Fin, Stir-ling, Mon-ro, or Bel-a-mi, from what the kitchen crew tells Lexa, although Lexa believes that Ravin and Clarke are increasingly fond of him. 

Lexa will accept that Murfi would not have been included. 

 

In the evening, the jail-master seeks entrance to Heda’s tent. 

He wants to tell Lexa something about Clarke. 

Gustus passes the request onto Lexa, and Lexa turns the jail-master away. She has ordered that no one is to be allowed to visit Clarke, not any of the other thralls, not Lida or Hosifmari or their earnest young apprentice, and she tells Gustus to reinforce that instruction. 

 

On the morning of the second day, Deklan is waiting outside Heda’s tent when she finally walks out. Lexa sweeps past him without acknowledgement.

 

Seely looks at Lexa sharply, the evening of the third day, when Lexa instructs her to heap the brazier with enough charcoal to burn merrily all night, rather than banking the fire. 

Lexa knows that Seely’s disapproval is for Clarke’s continued absence, not the wasted fuel, but she closes her eyes and pretends to ignore the sullen anger. She is Heda and Seely is nothing but a handmaiden. It is not Seely’s place to dare to judge her actions. And without Clarke beside her, Lexa’s nights are cold. 

 

It is just past noon on the fourth day when Indra and Oktavia return. They traveled fast despite Lexa’s generosity.

Lexa has still not decided what punishment she is going to visit on Mon-ro, who changed her mind and turned her compatriots in, but who had previously conspired to escape. She is not even settled on a punishment for Fin and Stir-ling, who are entirely guilty and had not shared Mon-ro’s change of heart. 

And she continues to refuse to allow anyone to mention Clarke in her presence. 

 

Lexa can hear Gustus arguing, and then Okatvia’s slim form slips through the entryway. Lida follows a moment later, stiff backed and seeming to tower despite her meager height, and Gustus almost creeps in behind them, clearly ashamed that a young girl and an old woman have foiled his guard.

‘If you are going to take her hand, Heda, that is your right, but you should do it cleanly.” Lida’s voice is ringing in condemnation. 

Lexa stares at her chief healer. 

“Take… her… hand…?”

Oktavia pushes forward until she is only a pace or two away from Lexa. Gustus surges to stand beside the girl, catches her arms behind her back, but Oktavia just sags in his grip so that she is leaning even closer to Lexa. 

“Clarke, down in your pit-- the jailer says that she’s not eating, she’s not drinking, I don't think she's even bothering to use the waste bucket, and the night you had her dropped in there, she slammed her fist into the wall so hard she broke at least three of her fingers. I’ve heard her say it before, when she talks about the Mountain, that if she ever wakes up in alone in a cell again she is certain that she will go completely mad--”

 _Wakes up in alone in a cell_ again _? What horrible experiences are lurking in Clarke’s past? What did her lost people_ do _to her, in their home in the sky?_

“She’s a _healer_ , Heda,” Lida has moved until she is standing only barely behind Oktavia, and, Gustus is looking back and forth between the two women, clearly trying to asses which is the greater threat. His indecision is distantly funny, and there’s a part of Lexa, removed from the horror of Oktavia’s words, that wants to burst into laughter at the sight. 

“--she needs full mobility in her fingers to stitch a wound or deliver a child. You are taking her hand by inches through this neglect, and if you are going to punish her that way you should be decisive and sure, as befits your position. Chop-chop, a single swing of the axe--.”

Lexa’s head is swimming, and her gorge is rising, and she leans over and retches bitter bile onto the precious, brightly woven carpet that lies underneath her chair.

 

A moment later, Seely is at Lexa’s side with a waterskin. Lexa pulls a sip, swishing out her mouth. Seely offers the washbasin and Lexa spits, and then, without her needing to ask, Seely is holding out Lexa’s cloak and Lexa swings it on.

“Let’s go,” Lexa tells Oktavia and Lida and Gustus. They don’t ask her, “go where.” They all seem to know that she is _going_ to get Clarke out of the pit. 

A hundred paces from the tent, Seely catches up with them. She is huffing to catch her breath, and carrying a string bag that is stuffed with warm clean socks, a shirt and trousers, and Clarke’s neatly folded cloak. Clarke’s boots are dangling by their laces from her other hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone would like to talk beyond the comment section (or see the rare worldbuilding/inspiration post) I have a tumblr [ here](http://sesquip-edality.tumblr.com).


	11. Chapter 11

Lexa is the first down into the pit. This once again is the privilege of rank: she is the reason they are all here, she is the one who has hurt the girl that they all care for, and still none of the others protest when she claims pride of place as the jail-master raises the trapdoor and lowers the ladder. 

There’s light, down below.

Lexa relaxes slightly, seeing that dim glow. She had never thought to wonder whether confinement in the pit consigned a prisoner to constant darkness, but -- there’s a lantern hanging from a hook in the wooden ceiling, burning steadily. Already, it’s not as bad as she had begun to fear.

She is determinedly ignoring the smell.

 

Lexa expects to climb down and find a Clarke who is standing, or seated. She expects to be confronted by a Clarke who is _alert_ and _aware_ and _enraged _. Lexa is bracing herself, as her foot gropes for the last rung, for the moment when she must turn around and meet Clarke’s condemning gaze.__

__

__Clarke is not standing. She is not sitting._ _

__

__She is sprawled on the floor, her limbs askew, her face buried in the dirty straw. She looks like a flung-off cloak, like an empty, discarded shirt._ _

__(She looks like a _corpse_.)_ _

__

__Lida is the next to descend, and she pushes at Lexa until Lexa steps away from the base of the ladder and Lida can slip past, hurry to Clarke’s body and begin the arduous process of lowering herself down beside it. Lida's fingers press against Clarke’s throat, feeling for a pulse, and at the sight of relief blooming like the rising sun, Lexa can move again._ _

__

__Clarke is still alive._ _

__

__Lida grabs up Clarke’s wrist next, and Lexa surges forward, a protest rising in her throat, as Lida pinches and pulls at the skin on the back of Clarke’s hand. Why is Lida _hurting_ Clarke? Hasn’t Clarke been hurt enough?_ _

__

__Lida is frowning, and Lexa hesitates before she tells Lida to stop. “See that?” Lida motions for Lexa to lean in close. “The way her skin is so slow to resume its proper shape?”_ _

__Lexa squints in the dim light and nods._ _

__“Octavia was wrong, when she believed the jail-master said that Clarke had not drunk any water.” Lida’s voice flattens. “If she had truly not let a drop pass her lips since you dropped her in here, Heda, then she would be _dead_.” _ _

__At Lexa’s clear surprise, Lida explains: “It does not take a warrior’s strength to survive for days and days without food. In fact, a small, soft, nicely-curving little thing like our Clarke could manage weeks of hunger very well. But take away the water, and even the hardiest warrior’s fight will be over by the fourth day spent dry.”_ _

__Lida pinches Clarke’s hand again, and they watch the skin sink down, so slowly, back to a smooth tension. “So, she has been drinking, within at least the last day or two, we know this because she is still alive, but she has not been drinking enough. Get the waterskin,” and she gestures to its location in the corner._ _

__

__When Lexa complies, Lida shows her how to pry Clarke’s jaw open, how to dribble the water down her own fingers so that it drip drip drips very slowly between Clarke’s parted lips. Lexa watches the muscles in Clarke’s throat work as the girl reflexively swallows. The cracks in Clarke’s lips have split, and the beading blood looks almost black._ _

__

__Lexa wants Lida’s opinion, wants to know if it’s just the lamplight that makes Clarke’s blood look so dark or if its a sign that something else is wrong, but Lida has already shifted down to look at Clarke’s dominant hand and its purpled, swollen fingers._ _

__

__“Nothing to worry about,” Lida answer reassuringly when Lexa asks, instead, if Clarke is permanently maimed. “We’ll splint them, but there’s only so much you can do for broken fingers even in the best circumstances. Perhaps one or two of them will be a little bit crooked, or a few knuckles will be larger and more knobby, and she’ll feel the change in the weather, now, but the hand will still function fine.”_ _

__

__So Lida’s speech, that Lexa was costing Clarke the use of her hand through neglect, it was solely meant to shock._ _

__Lexa is not upset at the deception._ _

She’s grateful. At least it worked, at least she’s here now, at least she is going to get Clarke _out_ , get Clarke _back_.... 

Lexa is starting, amid her dawning horror, to suspect that the first task is going to be much simpler and more easy than the second. 

Gustus is the one who carries Clarke, slung over his shoulder like a young lamb, all of the way up the ladder. Lexa braces herself on the ground directly underneath as he climbs, as if she were strong enough to catch Clarke if he were to drop her. 

Everything is bright, when they come up through the trapdoor, and the air is so crisp and clear that Lexa can’t help drawing in deep breaths, even though the cold makes her lungs hurt. 

They don’t need the spare shirt that Seely had carried. Or the shoes. 

Clarke’s trousers are disgusting, but the reason Lida and Seely cut them off her and replace them with a clean pair is because they are sodden, _wet_ and-- “we can't risk letting her get chilled.” 

Oktavia stands a few paces back from the flurry of anxious activity, her arms crossed and her face set in disapproval. 

Lexa hovers. 

Lida turns down the pathway towards the healing tent and Lexa continues straight towards her own quarters and Gustus stops in the middle of the crossroads in confusion. The cloak-wrapped bundle that he carefully balances in his arms is very small and very still. 

“Chief Healer,” Lexa straightens her spine and lifts her chin until she can look at Lida down the length of her nose. She is _Heda_ , even now, and that _will_ be respected. “Shall Clarke require any treatments that could not take place inside my own quarters?" 

Lida’s lips flatten into a line and her high cheekbones press up until the gleaming black of her eyes shows only as narrow slits, half buried by delicate wrinkles of copper-gold skin, but her voice stays level: she doesn’t argue. “Your tent suffices, Heda. I will just go and fetch a few useful things.” 

Lexa insists, after Clarke has been bathed, her hand splinted and bandaged, on being the one who sits and moves the tiny spoon back and forth between the bowls of lukewarm broth and Clarke's half-parted lips. 

Hours later, Lida prods at Clarke’s hand again and the skin springs back immediately. 

"Well. You can stop with the broth, for tonight,” Lida says, "she's enough water in her, now." 

“Is she all better, then?”

Lida sighs, and it sounds sad. “No, Heda. I am very afraid that this is only the beginning.” 

Lexa doesn’t mean to fall asleep but eventually she does, curled up on top of what is usually _Clarke’s_ side of the bed. Seely is keeping the fire so high that it’s warm even above the coverings. 

When she wakes, the braziers are glowing piles of embers. The tent is still much hotter than on a normal night but its cold enough that Lexa shifts, reaching down reflexively, trying to pull up the blanket. Then she freezes, her hand still outstretched. 

Next to her, Clarke is awake. Lida is murmuring and Clarke-- it’s not even words, really. 

Just little mewls of pain and sadness. 

Lexa remembers the abandoned kitten she had found and snuck into her quarters in the Tower, when she was very young. She had tried to feed the creature with a milk-dipped rag but the tiny thing didn't suckle, just meowed pathetically and got thinner and quieter until she came back from her lessons one day to find the little body stiff and cold. 

Now, Lexa wants to shift close to Clarke, wrap the girl in her arms and rock her back and forth, the way she would after Clarke woke from a nightmare, but some instinct makes her stay still. 

Lida is heating water and steeping a tea and encouraging Clarke to drink, drink it all down, that's a good girl. 

After a few minutes Clarke is quiet and limp again, her breathing slow and even. 

Lexa can recognize the smell of poppy-tea. 

“Was that for her hand?” Lexa demands, sitting up. She remembers when Costia had broken two fingers while wrestling. Costia had not been offered anything to help with the pain, but that was only two and with Clarke its all four-- 

“No,” Lida's voice is hushed. “It’s for the pain here,” she touches her own temple, “and here,” a fist pressed against her heart. 

In the morning, Clarke's blue eyes are open and unseeing and she parts her lips and swallows obediently when Seely spoon-feeds her porridge. 

In the morning, Clarke flinches when Lexa reaches out to brush the hair away from her eyes, and then she flinches again, when Lexa jerks her hand back from the unexpectedly fearful response. 

In the afternoon, Anya’s other thralls, Ravin and Murfi, show up at the tent accompanying Lida. Lida directs them to take off their muddy boots, to curl up close to Clarke on top of Lexa's bed and talk of their former lives, their perished families. Clarke's eyes stay shut the entire time, but when Murfi takes her hand in his, her fingers twitch, grip back in return. And when Ravin reaches up and starts to stroke down Clarke’s shining fall of bright hair, loose for once from its confining braids, Clarke smiles, almost too small to see, and leans into the touch. 

In the afternoon, no messenger arrives from Anya, even though it is the fifth day. 

In the afternoon, Gustus is exceptionally stiff and formal when he comes to Lexa’s side to announce a new arrival. “Heda,” his voice is urgent, “Titus.” 

Lexa gapes. 

“Titus departed Polis with only eight warriors riding in protection," Gustus explains hurriedly. "He has come to this camp to meet with you, he says. He says he is here to remind you of your broader duties and urge you to return to the Tower." 

“Titus.” Lexa tastes the name on her tongue. “Titus is _here_.” 

Gustus nods. 

“Not in Polis. Not in the Tower. Titus is here, in the war camp.” 

Gustus shrugs helplessly. 

There’s a gust of cold air as the door-flap pushes open, and Titus ducks his shaved head low enough to enter the tent. 

His long black robes are mud splattered, creased with riding, and Lexa can see that he looks tired and hungry and cold. He looks weary, and worried. For the first time in Lexa's memory Titus looks _old_. But still, in the brief moment as he pauses to adjust to the reduction in light before striding towards her, Titus reminds Lexa of a black bird. 

A swooping, stalking raven, or a crow. 

A bad omen. Sign of the worst kind of luck.


	12. Chapter 12

Lexa loves Gustus and Seely. 

With all of her heart.

Seely is a flurry of activity from the moment of Titus’s entrance, stepping forward and taking ownership of his comfort -- might she take his cloak? Here, this chair can be moved close to this brazier, and there is spiced wine hot and ready, “but perhaps the Flame Keeper prefers a steeped herbal tea, a tisane while the sun is still high in the sky-- somewhere, that is, behind those dark, dark clouds--” and, “no, it is _not_ too much bother, it will only take a moment to heat the kettle-- but does a drink suffice? Perhaps a runner should be sent to the kitchen tent, for surely the Flame Keeper would like a late lunch or an early supper, after such a long journey with nothing to eat but travel rations and warriors’ bad cooking--”

 

And Gustus has taken full advantage of the distraction Seely provides. 

After a quick, confirming nod from Lexa, he chivies Ravin and Murfi off of the bed and gestures for them to gather their outerwear. Clarke slumps back against the pillows with their absence. Her eyes are open, now, but they are unfocused, staring into space.

When Murfi drops to his knees to begin shoving Clarke’s stockinged feet into her boots, Gustus yanks him back to standing. Indicating that Murfi should simply carry Clarke’s shoes, Gustus bundles Clarke into one of the blanket and then hoists her into his arms. 

Over his forearm, her neck hangs limply, her head swaying with every step as Gustus leads Ravin and Murfi out of the tent and into the rain. 

 

It _might_ not be conspiracy, that Seely is distracting Titus from these interesting proceedings. 

Seely is solicitous to everyone, and the Flame Keeper makes an especially intimidating guest. 

Except that when Titus starts to turn over his shoulder, to look at Gustus and Clarke and Ravin and Murfi-- Seely pours near-boiling water all over his lap. 

And it was a _pour_ , not a _spill_ , Lexa is sure of it.

Seely is never clumsy. And if her wrist had simply given way beneath the weight of the water-filled kettle, that arch of bone and tendon would have collapsed, not curved so gracefully and delicately. 

 

Titus curses at the near-scalding water and jumps to his feet, upending the chair and the little circular table. He nearly tips over the brazier, too, which would have been disastrous. Seely cowers before Titus’s anger, eyes lowered and mouth full of desperate apologies as she mops at his robe and restores the furniture. 

A few deep breaths later, Titus has calmed himself enough to beg her pardon for the vehemence of his reaction. It was just that it was such a shock, the water was so hot, although thankfully it did not burn-- he knows that it was an accident, she is a good woman, their Seely, she is not to think that she did anything wrong--

By the time Seely has accepted reassurance, Gustus and the three thralls are long gone from sight. 

 

Lexa knew her handmaiden was reporting to Titus.

The Flame Keeper is a shadowy, mysterious figure to much of the Twelve Clans, to the village people and the warriors --in fact, Titus and his apprentices utilize almost the same techniques of misdirection and intimidation that the Maunon employ in their sorcery, although Lexa would never dare to voice that comparison to Titus’s face -- but to the denizens of the Tower, the Flame Keeper’s presence and power rivals that of Heda themself. 

Hedas come and go, but the Flame Keeper persists. Standing just behind Heda’s chair and whispering in Heda’s ear. Ruling in Heda’s stead, when the Flame enters one who is very young. 

And while all of the secrets an individual Heda has gathered die along with their body, like Heda’s Spirit, the Flame Keeper remains. The Flame Keeper _remembers_ , remembers every old shame and truth-behind-rumor, with the clarity of a single life. And secrets, well. Secrets are power. 

 

So Lexa had known, without needing to ask. Sometimes, when Seely left the tent, it was to quietly deliver a report to a messenger who would repeat her words back until they echoed perfectly and then carry that missive, along with many others, all the way back to Polis and the Tower. 

Lexa had been irritated, briefly, that Seely’s arrival made her tent walls as useful as a room built from Before Times glass. Seely is not the only Tower spy in the camp, of course. There will always be informants among the warriors and the camp staff. But those observers were not privileged to the intimate details of how Heda slept, whether she smiled or frowned when she was alone. Before Seely's arrival, Lexa had some privacy in the business of her own life.

Lexa had been irritated to have that privacy stolen, for as much as a candle-mark, and then she had moved on: she has been under similar close observation for her entire life, except for the few brief years of freedom she had spent as Anya’s Second. It is a normal state, really-- it was the chance for privacy that made the true deviation. 

And Lexa hadn’t spent much time pondering Titus’ likely reaction to the news of Anya’s Sky Fallen thralls. Much less the way he would frown over the reports that Heda was grown unusually fond of one of the thralls, in particular. It was all out of Lexa’s control: Seely would report and Titus would be displeased, but Titus was in the Tower. He was a problem for another time.

Now, Titus is in camp. 

Titus is in Lexa's _tent_.

And Seely is acting very oddly, as if Clarke lying in Lexa's bed is a secret still worth keeping. 

 

There’s a reason that Seely is Lexa’s favorite.

Seely is the oldest of Heda’s handmaidens. She is the most sure of herself. She is never disrespectful, but she knows her own mind. Seely has her ways of making her disapproval apparent, when she believes that Lexa has acted incorrectly. And while Seely would swallow her own tongue before she directly contravened orders from Titus, she is clever enough to see the shape of exactly what is required, and to not go one hairsbreadth further when she disagrees with the intent.

 

And then, too, messengers who know their missives word for word when they leave camp still have a long journey on their return. A long journey during which a few details might, perhaps, fade from memory. More importantly, though, they have the _excuse_ of having simply and honestly forgotten, when the one to whom they report frowns at the beginning of a message and they choose to elide, pass over, skip onto more pleasant news. 

 

Heda-who-was had pointed that out to Lexa, the way that their Flame Keeper’s unsuppressed expressions of anger and disappointment created a conspiracy of silence. No one wanted to be the one who first voiced news that provoked Titus’s displeasure

“Do not follow Titus's example,” Heda-who-was had told Lexa. “You must always be calm as a still lake. Let no breeze ruffle your surface. Your sadness and your fear and your anger must be as a stone that drops down, out of sight, and leaves behind no ripples.”

Lexa had nodded at that, carefully concealing her impatience-- see, she already knew the lessons of always-appear-calm! 

But Heda-who-was had continued: “Still, this is not enough. If you are a good leader, your people will love you, and this love will still make them wish to avoid all subjects that might cause you pain or disappointment. And this well-meaning leads to silence when there should be speech, and a lack of valuable knowledge. It is always better to know the hard thing, however painful you may find it, than to persist in ignorance.”

“Therefore,” he had concluded, “you must always imagine the worst of all possible circumstances, and when your people pause, in their reports to you, you must voice that possibility aloud. This gives them relief of providing reassurance, that it is not as bad as you have shown that it could be. Or, in the worst cases, at least they only bring confirmation that the village has burned down, that the warriors are all slaughtered and dead, that the crops are rotten in the fields. You will have already brought the possibility of such defeats into the world, in voicing them, and so they will not feel responsible for bearing bad news when they report that yes, all of your fears have come true.”

 

Lexa has followed this advice closely. 

It guides her every interaction. 

Except regarding Clarke’s imprisonment. 

 

In that one instance, Lexa had _refused_ to hear reports that her people were desperate to give. She had turned away the Jail-Keeper’s news of Clarke’s concerning reactions, ignored the healers’ requests. She had been so focused on the idea that her own _interest_ in Clarke would make her soft that, in attempted prevention, she had steeled herself to the point of excessive hardness. To the point of needless cruelty. And now Lexa can only hope that this foolish impulsivity has not destroyed Clarke permanently. 

 

Gusuts is back, stationed again at the front of the tent, sliding into his role so quietly that his prior absence goes unmarked. 

 

Lexa does not let herself wonder how Clarke is doing. No Seely to care for her, no Lexa to worry and observe-- surely Ravin and Murfi cannot do half as good a job. Surely Anya’s tent is colder than Lexa’s own. Lida will visit Anya’s tent just as she would Lexa’s, but --

 

\--Lexa smiles and, at Titus’s urging, samples one of the the delicacies the kitchen boy has delivered, faking effusive pleasure at the mediocre taste. 

 

Lexa misses the table laid by the Tower’s kitchens. 

 

And she misses the Tower’s baths-- not small basins, just big enough to fit one person if knees are pressed tight to chest-- and Clarke, nonetheless, has gone into ecstasies over this meager camp substitute every time Seely ordered it filled-- but proper _bath rooms_. Sunken pools of steaming hot water, wide enough to swim from one side to another. Deep enough at their center that Lexa has to stretch her toes down to the tiled floor or risk being submerged. 

 

Lexa would like to walk Clarke through that misty doorway and see her wide-eyed awe at so much sensuous indulgence. 

 

Lexa would _like_ to tumble Clarke into her bed. Her real bed. Her Tower bed, which renders this camp substitute narrow and hard as a rocky gorge in comparison. 

It doesn’t get cold like this in the Tower. The wind finds very few places to whistle through those magical walls-- in the Tower, Clarke would not be lying next to Lexa under the excuse of sharing body heat.

In the Tower, Clarke would not be wearing a thick sleepshirt and knitted socks. Sometimes even a quilted overshirt or a knitted vest. 

 

In this daydream of the Tower, Clarke is in nothing but a thin shift, and her skin is dewy with over-warmth, so that the fabric is clinging and half transparent. In this daydream, Clarke’s hair is not sensibly braided for sleep. It is draped loose and free across the pillow, and it curls at her temples and her hairline from contact with dripping beads of sweat. 

 

In this daydream, Clarke’s breath is sweet and slow through soft parted lips. In this daydream, Lexa has no responsibilities and she can lie next to Clarke for as long as she likes; hypnotize herself with the slow blink of Clarke’s eyelashes. 

 

In this daydream, Lexa can send all of her handmaidens out of the room. 

She can lean over. 

She can kiss Clarke, and daydream-Clarke will kiss her back. 

 

Daydream-Clarke smiles into Lexa’s mouth, nips at her lips and tries to swallow her tongue, eager and devouring. Daydream-Clarke is fierce and hungry and alert, with hands that clutch at Lexa’s back and shoulders, pull down until they are pressed as close together as two bodies can be, breast to breast, Clarke’s hips rocking up into the insistent nudge of Lexa’s thigh--

Lexa cuts off her thoughts with such a severe abruptness it's almost painful.

 

Real Clarke is a husk of a person, a shell, _because of_ Lexa’s inappropriate desire for her. 

 

Lexa has locked Clarke up underground for _over three days_. Lexa has locked Clarke up without telling Clarke _why_ , and Clarke’s spirit has _fled_ from her body, unable to endure another moment of such cruel torment. 

Clarke is never going to trust Lexa again, not truly. 

Clarke is always going to be aware that Lexa has the power to hurt her, because Lexa has _already done so_.

And if in the past Lexa could hope for a chance that one day, she might be able to ask Clarke to share in pleasure, well. That chance is frost blighted and blackened and dead, now. 

After what Lexa has done, Clarke will never feel safe telling her "no". 

And if Clarke cannot say no, then Lexa cannot trust that she truly means a “yes.”  


***

  
Over a long, lingering meal, Lexa tells Titus all of newfound revelations regarding the Mountain.

Titus listens deeply, integrating the information provided by Anya and the Reapers and the thralls into his understanding of the world. 

This news has been sent onto Polis, of course, but the means of that sending inherently render it fragmented, incomplete-- and follow up questions are nearly impossible, when two people converse via the intermediary of messengers. 

_This_ is one of Lexa’s _least_ favorite things about life in the Tower: the lack of opportunity to go out and get her own answers to her questions. She hates having her knowledge limited to what others noticed and then thought worthy of reporting. 

 

Over evening wine, Titus and Lexa discuss the evacuation of the surrounding villages. Titus has further news of how the exiled Trikru are settling in, the small, petty conflicts that have arisen between them and their new hosts-- and stories, too, of the emerging paths to resolution and reconciliation. 

 

The next day, Anya’s messenger is still missing.

Titus and Lexa discuss the possible causes of such a delay.

The messenger might have been injured or killed on his journey, while Anya and her warriors remain unharmed. Anya may have not sent a messenger at all, for any of a variety of reasons that do not mean calamity. Perhaps she faced battle with Reapers, or needed to stay hidden as the Maunon prowled in shifts for several days through the woods. 

Or perhaps Anya and her warriors have been discovered. Perhaps they have all been killed, or Taken. 

There is no way of knowing. Anya’s band had been progressing in their destruction of the Reapers’ tunnels in a random pattern in an attempt to avoid detection. Lexa cannot guess where they had gone to next. And she should be prudent, wait a few days longer, before she commences a thorough search of the woods. 

 

The next day, Lexa pulls out all of her maps and lets Titus walk her through the state of the roads.

This news is bad: Lexa’s activities have stolen much of the warrior labor that would usually go to maintenance. Now, with winter coming on, there’s no chance to catch up. The traders and the supply caravans will be slow come spring, dealing with downed trees and deep mud and flooded-out pathways.

 

Once the maps are put away, Titus has a full stack of tally sheets: the newest figures the Tower’s Store Keepers have compiled from the villages’ self reports and the caravans of tithed contributions. It’s nearly a complete assay, with fall easing into winter, of the harvest gathered in from land and from sea.

 

It was not a particularly good year. 

The snow lingered so long, and then the summer was so wet… in some villages, half of the crops rotted in the fields. 

And there is some concern that too much waste has made it into the ocean. Too many villages would rather dump the contents of their latrines into the sea than deal with it all properly, as if, once under water, the foul mess is rendered harmless. There are many places where the boats did not bring back crab and fish and lobster in the numbers that the Store Keepers would expect. 

Still, if not a good year, it was also far from the worst they have ever seen. 

And the storehouses still contain much of last year’s unusually abundant bounty. 

No one will starve this winter.

 

The second night of Titus’s stay in camp, Gustus pours out small cups of strong liquor. Titus drinks deep, until his cheeks flush and he laughs and shares stories of the Nightblood novitiates. 

Lexa smiles with genuine pleasure at these anecdotes, especially the ones concerning her favorite, the golden Aidan. 

 

 _You should come home_. 

Lexa can hear that unvoiced message in every word Titus has said since his arrival. _You should already know this, because you should be at home._

There is a part of Lexa that can’t help but agree. 

 

It’s not until dawn of the day second day after Titus’s arrival, clouds still scarlet across the sky, glowing red with the late-rising sun, that Lexa finally manages to get a minute alone.

She skips breakfast and slips out of her own tent with nary a word to anyone, without even Gustus’s silent accompaniment. 

 

Lexa makes her way through the still-waking camp to Anya’s tent, but when she pushes open the curtain flap, only Ravin and Murfi are inside. The two thralls are indolent, blinking up at her from where they sit, blanket draped, on Anya’s bed, eating their meager breakfast.

 

“Clarke is in the healing tent.” Murfi seems confused, when Lexa stumbles out the reason for her visit. 

Gustus had carried Clarke straight to the healing tent, Ravin clarifies, when he shepherded the three thralls out into the rain ereyesterday. He had not brought Clarke to Anya’s tent at all. The girl's voice is nearly dripping with her scorn for Lexa's ignorance.

“We visited Clarke the last two evenings, between end-of-work and bed,” Murfi adds. The glance he shoots at Ravin is quelling. Either Lexa has an ally in Murfi, for all the useless worth of a thrall’s allegiance, or the boy has enough good sense to be afraid of Heda. “She’s not gotten any better.”

Lexa can feel herself flinch at the news. She had been hoping-- she had been hoping. 

 

After a mumbled leavetaking, she lets the doorflap fall shut behind her.

As she strides forward, she pulls her hood low enough to shade her face. She hunches her shoulders and she ducks her chin and she avoids eye contact with everyone she passes. She has a vain idea that she can conceal herself well enough to make it through the camp without being waylaid by ten different questions. 

 

It doesn’t work, of course. 

 

The red has faded from the sky and the dull grey clouds are dropping curtains of stinging sleet before Lexa finally makes it into the herb-and-sickness scented warmth of the healing tent. 

Lida catches sight of Lexa immediately and gestures towards a cot in the back. There’s a small figure lying on it, curled up so that her face is hidden and her back is to the rest of the room. 

And there's a tall, dark robed figure sitting on the stool beside the cot. 

Titus. 

Titus has found Clarke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr [ here](http://sesquip-edality.tumblr.com).


	13. Chapter 13

“There’s another stool,” Titus gestures. Lexa fetches over the rickety, three legged folding structure, perches on it delicately enough to maintain her balance.

“Your Healer told me that the leaders of her people executed her father in front of her, and then locked her up, alone, for over a year.” Titus’s voice is soft, considering.

“Yes,” Lexa has pieced the picture of this together slowly, from Clarke’s whispers after her nightmares and the information Lexa has subtly encouraged Anya to solicit from her other thralls.

“They all died,” Titus asks. Lexa looks up in confusion. “Her people. They are not going to appear from nowhere and ask to be our neighbors?”

“No,” Lexa confirms. “Their home was that comet that streaked across the sky and exploded; more than two moons ago.”

Titus’s face relaxes. “Good. That is what your messengers said, but it sounded so unbelievable, people living in the sky, I was never sure that they spoke truth. It is bad enough, though, that Azgeda has joined the Coalition. I can feel our values shift as we stretch from Eleven Clans to Twelve, as we accommodate and accept their barbarism. I am glad to know that you will never need to weigh the value of breaking bread in peace with these -- _Sky People_ ”.

Lexa frowns, and her voice turns chiding. “Azgeda has changed too, in the time since their joining. If you add one portion of water to eleven of honey, the result is honey, still. Just somewhat thinner. We remain ourselves, despite Azgeda’s small influences. And they are ever more sweet from this intermixing.”

Titus remains silent, and Lexa can’t help falling into the litany of arguments, quick on her tongue even after so much time, due to endless repetition in the Council of Ambassadors. “An Azgeda who lives well, by our mercy, is much to be preferred to an Azgeda who creeps in like a starvling wolf and harasses the flock.” 

When Titus frowns, mulish, Lexa shifts to glare at him. “Titus, you yourself supported my decision to seize the moment and bring Azgeda in. Too much of their grain had been tainted with the Black; after that hard winter and the wet spring that followed.”

Lexa’s voice is tinged with sorrow as she considers the plight of the Ice Nation-- but what could Nia have done to prevent it? Lexa considers Nia to be a hard, cruel queen, but in truth, Nia has always done the best she could by her people. 

“Titus, you _know_ that they have too little good land to have many fields lying fallow. And they can’t grow much more than rye and winter wheat, with the cold off the glaciers-- they have no chance for crop rotation. Of course the Black grew, year by year, until it overtook their whole harvest. And Azgeda have never had storehouses like ours -- they lived by one year’s meager crop and whatever they could take from us in raiding.”

Her voice rises, impassioned. “Azgeda was left with a choice between starvation, if they burned the fields, and madness and gangrene if they harvested! In desperation they would have surged against us like the tide coming in, inexhaustible and unrelenting. They would have attacked us again and again, however many times we beat them back. It would not have ended until every one of their raiders was dead and many of our warriors as well. I _spared_ us that slaughter, when I rode West with half the army and as many wagons, offering obliteration with one hand and salvation in the other.”

Titus sighs. “It was the right thing to do, Heda. But _right_ does not mean _easy_ , or _without cost_.” His arm stretches, drapes around her shoulder, and Lexa lets herself lean into it. She _has_ missed Titus, these months away from Polis. That’s a truth even if there are other truths that mean things between them will ever be complicated. 

“Nia will hate you forever,” Titus adds, his voice wry. “For being kind when she was weak.”

Lexa shrugs. “And there are toddlers alive and stumbling about on fat legs now, in all of her villages, who would have been left out as infants, given to the winter, even if the Black had not come to them so badly. Azgeda’s life is so improved, with a full share from the Tower’s stores, that her people will never let her turn against me openly.”

“No,” Titus agrees, “but the fox or the weasel can be as dangerous as the wolf or the bear, if they catch you by surprise. You must be ever wary, Heda.”

Lexa gives him a level look. He sighs, and the arm around her shoulder squeezes. “I wish you did not have to be ever-wary, Lexa. I wish yours could be an easy life, a life of trust and openness and love returned.”

Costia. 

The name hangs in the air, unspoken. Never spoken, between the two of them. And Titus had been the one to suggest Costia’s scouting mission, and Lexa will always wonder and never ask --

“But that is not Heda’s path.” Lexa makes her voice flat, matter of fact. 

“No,” Titus agrees. “But I think, now, that you should find what joy in life you can.” His gaze turns to Clarke. “And I will do my best to aid you in that.” So he knows. Of course he knows. Even if Seely had not said anything, here in camp Titus can ask anyone whatever questions he likes. 

 

“The interrogators say,” he changes the subject, “that a strong warrior, one who will not break even if you take their eyes or their fingers, will still give up secrets, if left alone, long enough, without the company of a single human face.”

Lexa bites her lip. She has taken lives more times than she can count, in the heat of battle and the icy calm of execution. But Heda does not torture. 

To torture effectively requires skill. There is a rhythm to it, pain and then relief so that the next pain falls even sharper. And a good interrogator has the knowledge of how to prolong agony without letting the captive sink into sweet unconsciousness, or death.

Lexa has handed many captives and criminals off to her Jail Keepers. She has never asked for details on how the information was obtained, when they returned with their reports.

She had not known what she was doing, when she locked Clarke up. And she had not let anyone tell her. 

 

“Her spirit is missing,” Titus says. Clarke is still curled up on the bed, oblivious to their conversation. Lexa can see a glimpse of her face -- Clarke’s nose is running, and her upper lip is raw and chapped. 

“I have discussed, with your Healer, a ritual that one must do before becoming a Flame Keeper--” Lexa stares at Titus. The ways of the Flame Keeper are shrouded in secrecy, hidden even from Heda, who themself carries the Flame. 

“It is intended to let the spirit wander, but it might also draw this thrall’s spirit back, if it is fled. Or bring it out, if it is merely buried deep.”

Lexa shivers. Wandering spirits. Can they be lost, if they wander too far? Isn’t that the concern, with Clarke? “It sounds dangerous.”

The fingers of Titus’ other hand tap tap on his knee. “There is a danger in inaction, too.”

 

They are putting Clarke back in the pit. That’s an irony which Lexa cannot ignore. 

The ritual requires a small, closed space, though -- a pit or a mud-plastered hut, somewhere that can be made very warm, and filled with steam and the smoke of magic herbs. The pit is already dug, and Titus is ever practical. 

The ritual will last through the night and the next day and the next night, all of the way to the second dawn. 

Potential Flame Keepers are hale in body and sound in mind. They can endure such extensive rigors.

Lida or Hosifmari will climb down and check on Clarke, it is agreed, every second hour. Privately, Lexa asks them to check on Titus, too. He will not go as deep or as far as Clarke, but he is no longer a young man, and she requires his council for many years to come.

 

Titus gathers various items, out of his own traveling chest and the healing tent’s stores. 

He demands a portion of smokeleaf, from those of the warriors who like to huff on pipes.

Titus has always called smoking a filthy habit, and Lexa herself can barely stand the smell-- Costia had smoked, sometimes, when her brow was creased with worry, and Lexa would refuse her embrace until the smell was gone from Costia’s breath and her clothes and her hair-- but Titus brews a tea out of the smokeleaf, so it is not among the things that Clarke is intended to inhale.

They put rugs and cushions down on the floor of the pit, a large brazier and a waste bucket. There are plump waterskins, their surfaces damp and sweating, but no food. 

Lida frowned when Titus insisted that the ritual requires fasting. She argued fiercely, pointing to the new thinness of Clarke’s wrists, the hollowing of her cheeks. 

Clarke had put on weight since her arrival in the camp. 

Even with her long, strenuous hours in the healing tent and her habit of skipping lunches, she had, thanks to Seely’s kindness and Lexa’s deliberate offering of second helpings, begun to look as smooth and sleek as a seal. Clarke had begun to look _well-cared for_ in a way that gladdened Lexa’s heart-- Clarke’s is a frame that is meant to carry some weight, at hip and thigh and breast, not like Lexa, who will always be slender as a sapling tree. Clarke had looked healthy, and well-beloved. Until Lexa threw her away. 

Now, less than a double handful of days since Monroe’s revelations, Clarke looks less like a seal and more like a horse on long campaign, with not enough fodder and no time to forage. Lexa looks at the knobbing bones of Clarke’s wrists, her slack, slender fingers, and feels sick.

Finally, Titus compromises that Lida and Hosifmari may spoon broth into Clarke's mouth, when they come down to check on her. “It may only upset her stomach, though,” he warns, face dour. “When the spirit journeys, the body is unattended and often neglects such details as digestion.”

 

Things come together so fast that Titus is climbing down into the pit, Gustus following with Clarke cradled in his burly arms, even as the waxing moon rises above the treeline that very evening. The slender crescent is surrounded by glowing haze, although the clouds have cleared since morning-- the smoke of the fires has been lingering close, not drifting off into nothingness in the usual way, since the freezing rain stopped midday and the ground was left slick and coated with ice.

Lexa tells herself the waxing moon is a good omen. A sign of growth, not decline and death. And the lingering smoke, well, that is common in winter. In Polis, after a hard snow it can get so bad that children cough from days or weeks’ worth of trapped smoke, even with the clear air of the sea so nearby, until the sky finally boils over into thunderous storms. 

 

Lexa does not sleep that night, but it is not due to worry over Clarke. Hosifmari has only emerged from the first check, and although she didn’t ask him to, Lexa is very grateful that he came by her tent to report in, when they hear the first dull boom.

There are three in total. 

Two come from the directions of evacuated villages. And one comes from the Mountain itself. 

_Rahkets_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umm my research let me show it to you. The Azgeda's crop was suffering from ergot. I thought that ergot was almost a cliche and was about to go with some less-cool blight but then I checked and two out of the three people I polled had never even heard of it, so here's the name if you want to do more research (do more research! the impact ergot has had on history is incredible). 
> 
> Annnnd the reason sound travels so far is that they're having a winter inversion layer. Yep yep.


	14. Chapter 14

Clarke comes back into herself.

She wasn’t asleep, before. But now she’s awake.

She’s down in the pit. Down in the pit, again. She knows that. From the earth-and-wood walls, and… because... they’ve discussed it. They’ve discussed it? _They’ve_ discussed it?

Except for the walls--which are once again obeying the laws of physics-- the space is almost unrecognizable. 

 

The air is hazed with smoke from the flaming brazier, despite the fact that Clarke can see that some sort of chimney hood has been added into the trapdoor opening, whisking the worst away. Underneath the smoke, the air is scented with… herbs, and… a smell that matches what Clarke has read of descriptions of incense. Musky and sweet. Underlying it all is the rich smell of damp earth, and, faintly, the acrid tang of urine. 

Clarke remembers pissing in the bucket. She remembers The Man helping her lower her trousers, holding onto her elbow to steady her as she crouched. She expects to feel a flash of shame at the memory, but the embarrassment is entirely absent. 

The Man-- the man who helped her, the man who told her she was in the pit-- has gathered together several of the cushions that litter the floor; he is leaning back against the resulting pile. 

His face is grey and baggy with exhaustion. 

He’s been with Clarke the entire time. 

Clarke doesn’t know how much time that actually is, how long since they dropped her into the pit, again, but she is certain, down in her bones, that she was never left alone. 

 

The Man’s half-slitted eyes blink open as Clarke sits up. 

They are hazy and bloodshot-- from the smoke?-- and Clarke realizes that her own eyes are itchy and aching in a way that indicates they likely look the same. 

Her hand throbs, distantly. And she’s hungry -- ravenous, in fact-- and she’s tired, but she feels… good. Better than she has since Heda didn’t stop the warriors taking her away.

Even the pains are good. It’s proof that she’s here. Alive. Surviving. 

 

“How do you feel?” the man asks. 

That question, combined with his expression: it is intimately familiar. Clarke knows that look. From her mother, from Lida and Hosifmari, from the way it feels on her own face, that calm concern shown in eyes and mouth and cheeks. This is a medical professional checking in with a patient.

 

They’d never had any kind of counselling, on the Ark. 

Or, well-- some people went to Vera Kane, for her brand of Last Tree platitudes, but that was the beginning and end of available options for psychological care. 

On the Ark, you dealt with your problems. Silently, and if you couldn’t, no one mentioned your failure until your behavior escalated to the point where you were being dragged off for a floating execution.

The Ark didn’t have psychiatric drugs, either. Not one pill left of the chemicals Clarke is only familiar with from books. No SSRIs, no lithium, no benzos. Not even the opium derivatives that Lida and Hosifmari dispense so carefully and cautiously; the tiny, sanctioned marijuana crop was used strictly as an analgesic.

Well.

Actually.

The Ark had ethanol. And people certainly excelled at self-medication.

The Ark had Vera Kane and they had moonshine smuggled out of Ag.

And they had a secret, heartbreakingly widespread epidemic of domestic abuse and child neglect. Clarke has helped her mother treat the children, and the women, and the occasional man. Malnutrition. Concussion. Visceral injury. Spiral fracture. She saw the black eyes and the bruises, too, passing their frequent patients in the corridors, but people only went to medical when it was truly serious. 

Abby did her best with each case, and she didn’t file any reports to the Guards. 

These were private crimes. 

The Guard would not intervene in family matters unless someone complained, and no one ever did. Not Abby, not the neighbors… not Clarke. It was still better, the thinking went, to have a parent, to have a spouse, alive, however harsh and cruel, then to see them floated. And if it was bad enough, well -- the wife, the child, they had a voice too. They could make that call, sentence their family member to death. 

They had floated the mother of the shaken baby, when Clarke was eleven, after the decision was made to euthanize in the face of extreme brain damage. 

The baby’s father had insisted. 

He’d gotten special approval for a second child, with another woman, and Clarke remembers the toddler coming in with a broken wrist. She hadn’t said anything, though, and neither had Abby, and the child’s mother stayed silent, too. 

That’s the only instance Clarke can remember where the Guard got involved. 

 

The point of all this is that Clarke’s knowledge of psychiatric treatment for -- depression? Grief? Dissociation? General trauma? She barely even knows what words to use -- is extremely sketchy, but she’s pretty sure that it does _not_ include psychedelic drugs.

Whatever the man did, though -- it worked. 

Clarke is back in her body in a way that she is fairly sure she hasn’t been for days. 

 

“I feel very well, thank you,” Clarke says. “Ai.” “Mochof.” She says it in Grounder, the same tongue in which the man had asked her. She hadn’t consciously noticed, before, the way the Grounder tongue was carving canyons into her brain, coming more and more readily to her lips, but she is aware of it now. 

Her voice is surprisingly smooth and clear, not croaked or hoarse from long silence. She’d talked, she remembers now. The man had asked her questions, about what she saw, about her life that came before, her dead father and her dead mother and her dead Wells, and the words had spilled out in answer. 

“Good,” the man says. He nods at the ladder. “Then it is time to re-enter the world.”

*** 

Lexa has not had a spare moment to spend worrying over Clarke.

First the explosions, the _rahkets_ splitting the night sky. Booming proof that the Mountain knows a game is afoot, that they feel a need to act. But did the Maunon send their spells of flame and disaster in retaliation? Or in warning? 

Anya’s messenger has still not arrived. And now Lexa is truly heartsick over Anya’s safety.

First the _rahkets_ , and then an unending debate over what had prompted the attack. And whether or not they should evacuate the camp.

Lexa listened to her captains shout over each other until the paths of their arguments were worn smooth from retreading. 

Finally, she caught Gustus’s eye, raised her hand slightly so that he pounded on the table and roared, demanding silence so that Heda could speak. When the last of the captains had subsided, she announced that they would stay where they were. For the time being. 

The attack on the abandoned villages, while concerning, was nearly proof that the Maunon acted on outdated information. (She hopes). 

Until the Maunon knew the location of the camp, they were safe. (She hopes). And there have been sentries stationed deep in the woods since the beginning, able to catch, to misdirect or kill, any encroaching White Clad Sorcerers. (She is banking her people’s life on this. It must be true).

 

The moon is low in the night sky when Lexa has Ravin dragged out of Anya’s bed and delivered to Heda’s tent. Lexa tilts her head back so that she can look down her nose at the sleep-tousled thrall, demanding an explanation for the explosion that came from the Mountain itself. 

“Shit breaks,” Ravin answers in Gonnaslang, yawning widely around the words. “ _En-tro-pi_ , heat death of the universe, order descends into chaos as time marches on. Honestly I’m surprised the Mountain hasn’t had a misfire before now. Those rockets definitely weren’t designed to last a full century.”

“And are the Maunon badly damaged?”

Ravin shrugs rather than answering. 

It borders on insubordination. 

No, Lexa certainly does _not_ have an ally in this Sky-Fallen thrall. Not at all. 

 

She could have Ravin whipped. Just for this one case of clear disrespect. The thought is briefly tempting-- she is so tired, and still nauseous with dread-- but she _won't_.

“Words, please,” Lexa says instead, her voice sharp and clear as icy morning air. Ravin flinches, finally looks cowed.

“I can't tell you anything just from a sound,” Ravin mumbles, eyes downcast. ”I don't know how their battery is constructed. It could have collapsed from the explosion, depending on what materials it's built from and how the force was directed. Or it could just be scorched a bit. And I doubt they’ve placed it where it any mishap would breach their seals.”

Lexa stares at the flame of the lamp, flaring brighter in the breeze that has snuck through the edges of the doorflap.

She could send scouts. She could task them to see if any damage to the Mountain is visible. 

But the Maunon clearly suspect that _something_ is afoot. They will be more wary than ever, and there is a broad corridor around their stronghold which was forbidden to her warriors long ago, in the treaty that ended the First War Against the Mountain. 

The chance of the scouts’ discovery is not worth the knowledge they might bring back.

This is a war of attrition. This is poisoned corn, when there are rats in the storehouse and the cats have grown lazy. It does not matter how many vermin are dead on the first day, or the second-- the point is that you wipe them out in the end. 

 

Lexa sleeps long past dawn-- the whole camp does, after the bustle and worry of the night before. 

She is still over breakfast when she hears the commotion outside, and for a moment she is near to paralyzed. _She was wrong, she was wrong -- the Maunon are upon them--_ but it’s not screams and shouts of fear. There is no clashing of swords, there are no war horns--

Gustus steps inside and his face is bright, split wide with a smile. 

 

Anya’s captain is campaign-thin and grimy with travel, but his face glows with satisfaction and pride. 

Anya’s remaining warriors had tracked a party of Reapers, larger than anyone has heard tell of -- twenty-six, in all -- for four days, through the woods. And they had killed eleven, captured fifteen. 

This is why the lack of messenger, the delay. With so many warriors stationed in twos and threes, watching the remaining ways out of the Mountain, Anya is too poor in fighters to send the messenger on ahead of the traveling group. It was needful that he walk along at the slow pace of the others, helping to keep the Reapers under control. 

 

Anya’s captain has an explanation for the _rahkets_ , too: Anya’s former Reapers say that the Woman, the Witch who sickened them and took their minds, laughs to say it, confident in the strength of her sorcerous control, but the Old Man who leads the Maunon has ordered that new Reapers be told that if they ever act against the Mountain, if they ever break free and try to leave, the Maunon will retaliate by destroying the Trikru’s villages. 

Their previous captured Reapers were taken in ones and twos, the kinds of slow disappearances that looked like simple deaths and accidents, but twenty-six going missing at once…

The Maunon must be going mad with confusion and worry, Lexa thinks. And she grins back, matching the man's vicious delight. 

 

Anya’s messenger has further information. He has crude drawn maps and tally slates that together create a clear picture of the network of the tunnels, the entrances Anya has successfully closed off and those where Anya had to content herself with simply stationing watchers in the woods. There is a concern as well, he says, that some of the collapsed tunnels could, with enough work, be reopened. 

Lexa listens to him closely and then summons her captains for another long day of debate. Anya is asking for a change in strategy. 

A main camp does not make sense in this kind of war. 

This is, almost, not war at all. 

They must be hunters stationed in the woods. Waiting at ponds and along animal trails. Waiting for their prey to fall into their lap. Spread wide and thin. 

Hunting blinds and traps. Tripwires and pits and simpler things-- logs fallen across the pathway, tangles of bushes that discourage the unwary Reaper or Sorcerer. Funnels, directing them into the waiting warrior’s bowshot. 

They must weave a net of watchful eyes. And they must station those outposts well enough that the eyes are always alert and awake. And keep them supplied, too--

Lexa imagines a network of waterways. Brook leading to creek, to stream, to river, but in reverse. Supply stations, further out, spread in a ring around the perimeter, where the warriors can travel to pick up what they need and send messages further on. It will take a great effort of coordination and planning on the part of the Supply Masters, but Lexa has faith in their skill. 

And she does not belong in the woods, not for this. This kind of detailed planning is not her skill or her responsibility. 

Titus is right. 

May he be reborn into endless winter, may his crops rot and his children sicken and the wolves howl outside his home, but he is right. 

Lexa’s place is once again in Polis, leading the Twelve Clans. Divorced from the action, relying on messengers for news, politicking and smiling and keeping her eyes keen and her tongue sharp, so that no fractious jostling for power, no petty dispute, can unbalance this most essential task. 

This is a campaign, not a skirmish or a final decisive battle. And that means that Heda does not belong on the field. 

 

Lexa knows abstractly that Clarke has come back out of the pit, but the more essential fact is that Titus, her valued councillor, her able administrator, is returned to her. 

Once he has rested, she tasks him with planning their return. Three days, she tells him -- she has sent Anya’s messenger hurtling back, she wants to meet with Anya before she goes -- but she promises no further delays.


	15. Chapter 15

The snow falls outside of the lean-to. One wall behind them, made of stretched leather, and three sides open to the bare, glooming trees and the drifting white. 

Lexa resists the urge to huddle where she sits on the camp stool, to lean further into the fire. 

They are free from ears-- the nearest guard is stationed a dozen paces away-- but not from eyes. To be Heda is to account for observation in every act. 

Lexa cannot admit to cold. Not now, not among warriors who are risking their lives on her orders. Heda bears the Flame: surely it must keep her warm, since they follow her for the sake of its burning. To show human frailty in this moment would puncture Heda’s infallibility and open the door to dangerous doubt.

Across from Lexa, Anya sprawls on her stool. Long legs are stretched forward and arms hang loose, oblivious to the bite in the air. Anya is dressed more warmly, swaddled in thick furs in addition to woolens, but she is also accustomed to these temperatures. She has not seen the inside a proper tent for more than a moon. 

 

Earlier, Lexa sent her attendants away. Now they stand gossiping and eating reheated stew, clustered with Anya’s remaining warriors around the much larger bonfire. So it's Lexa herself who leans forward, bending to offer Anya the serving platter with careful grace.

Lexa can feel the flick-flick of watching eyes even if she’s too far away to hear the rush of excited murmurs. This is a sign of deep respect: Heda offers food to their War Leader from her own hand!

But it also feels like being Anya’s Second again.

Anya must be feeling the echoes too. Her mouth crooks in a half-smile as she makes her selection and her eyes are warm, crinkling at the corners. 

And Anya, secure in Lexa’s regard, has completely disdained the slices of succulent pink duck to take much more than her fair share of the honey drizzled, fresh-made bread. Worse, with a wicked smirk, she claims _all_ of the sharp, fatty cheese Titus had brought with him from Polis-- a rare treat in a war camp. Lexa's mouth waters as she watches the last crumbling morsel disappear, but she doesn’t voice a protest. She will be feasting in the Tower, soon enough, while Anya will still be here in the woods, living off wild game and boiled corn. Who knows how long it will be before Anya eats cheese and fresh bread again-- assuming she survives to do so. 

“The-unting-is-ood,” Anya says, still chewing. She swallows and takes a sip of the spiced wine to clear her throat. “More than good, Heda. Excellent. With very little effort we have almost more meat than we can eat.”

Lexa sucks on a piece of the crackling duck skin, enjoying the rich brown taste. Anya’s warriors-- and the occasional hunting party from Lexa’s camp-- are the only ones taking game from these woods, and in years past they have supported several hundred villagers. Of course the hunting is good. 

In a year or three, in fact, the hunting might be so good that it turns bad -- animal stock is stronger and healthier when the lame and the sick are weeded out, and the Woods Clan has never tolerated the danger and competition of bears and wolf packs so near their villages. Lexa will need to remember to have Polis send out hunting parties, next fall, if the war and the evacuation continue for as long as she now anticipates.

Or she could order them now, gather in this current plenty. It would help fill the wagons that trundle off to the villages which have taken in the refugees, reduce that drain on the Tower’s stores and avoid the grumbles that will accompany even the slightest increase in the tithe. 

But if left alone, these woods will act as a well stocked-larder for the warriors Lexa plans to station here. The more they can catch for themselves, the fewer supplies they must receive from elsewhere. And transportation of grain and beans and dried meat is not just a cost in supplies and labor: every wagontrain and every warrior who must leave their post to haul those goods back from the dropsite is a chance for the Maunon to notice unusual activity.

 

Lexa briefly considered appointing Anya as head of this campaign. 

Anya is the one who started everything, with her escape, with her news, with her realization that the lives of the future-thralls should be preserved for the sake of their valuable knowledge. 

And Anya burns with a conviction so powerful that it swayed both Lexa and the Conclave. She believes not only that the Mountain deserves to be destroyed, but that if the Twelve Clans can just muster up sufficient determination and willingness to sacrifice, they will somehow find a way to achieve that impossible goal. To Anya, a world where the Maunon are allowed to continue as they have, taking the lives and blood and spirits of the people of the Twelve Clans to use in their foul sorcery forever-- it is even more unimaginable to her than the idea that Heda can somehow create a future that contains the Mountain’s eventual destruction. 

But. But but but. The three hundred warriors Anya led against Clarke’s people are the largest command she has ever held, and that was a short war, and a comparatively simple one.

Not to mention the fact that all of those warriors died in Clarke’s Ring of Fire. 

Thankfully, the rumors in camp seems to place responsibility for that calamity firmly on Tristan’s shoulders, where it belongs. Anya certainly had plenty of eager volunteers when she selected her current War Band, which would not be true if she was whispered incompetent or cursed. And Lexa has been pleased to note, too, that common opinion has the thralls absolved of blame for the damage they’d wrought in their own defense. If there is one thing Azgeda’s addition has taught the warriors of the other Eleven Clans, it is how to fight side by side with someone who used to be an enemy, once the cause for conflict is over. Non-warriors, though.... those who have never killed in battle themselves… they have a much harder time letting go of old grudges. Lexa will need to keep a sharp eye on the treatment of the thralls should they travel to Polis or the villages. 

Returning to the point. Lexa did consider appointing Anya as Head Over All, but Indra is significantly more experienced. And -- Lexa knows that the Maunon have ways of identifying and assassinating the Twelve Clan’s leaders. It is unworthy of Heda to make decisions based on that fear-- but sometimes, Lexa cannot help being unworthy of Heda. The Flame has not yet rejected her, so clearly some selfishness must be expected and accepted. Even Heda is only human, although she does her best to convince everyone otherwise. 

“Indra will be Campaign General,” Lexa says now, into the crackling of the fire and the creaking of the trees. Anya hums in unsurprised acknowledgement, mouth once again filled with bread.

“You will be her Hand and Voice,” Lexa continues, and Anya chokes and sputters before she gathers herself to exclaim in pleasure and surprised gratitude. To be Second under Indra, tasked with carrying out all of the day-to-day details, is no small honor and responsibility. 

 

At a certain point, when the coals are dim under thick coats of grey ash, their talk turns to their more personal responsibilities. What should be done with the thralls, now that there is no longer to be a main camp where they can be safely held and utilized?

“Well, I am sending Mon-ro and Fin and Stir-ling to Luna, to labor in the brine fields making salt,” Lexa tells Anya. She had just reached that decision the day before, on Titus’ suggestion. 

It’s a good idea on many counts-- Lexa will still benefit from her thralls’ labor, in the portion of the salt they make that will accrue to her personal disposal, and Luna can handle their presence better than many of the other Clan leaders. And Luna, who so likes to hide from the world and its need for compromise-- there’s a certain grim pleasure in dumping a complicated problem like the Sky thalls into her lap. The world still exists, even if Luna closes her eyes to it. It is long past time for Luna to pay back some small measure of the benefits she receives from Heda’s protection.

Anya’s brow wrinkles in puzzlement as Lexa grins with fierce satisfaction at the tidy solution. “Why those three and not your fourth one-- Bel-a-mi?” she asks. With a jolt of shock, Lexa realizes that Anya has no knowledge of what happened-- Fin and Stirling’s betrayal, Indra’s adoption of Oktavia, Lexa’s own mishandling of Clarke. That mess had consumed Lexa’s mind for days, and all this time Anya was completely oblivious. 

Lexa summarizes quickly, presenting it as a minor affair, now over and done with. She hopes it’s too dark for Anya to see how the blood rises in her cheeks at the deception -- Ravin, Murphi, Bel-a-mi, Fin, Stir-ling and Mon-ro may be well sorted, but Clarke -- Lexa has not seen the girl since she came out of the pit again, barely dared to ask about her, but she knows that even if Clarke is once again talking and eating and helping to care for the newly captured Reapers, that situation is far from _fixed_.

Anya finally deigns to take one of the duck slices, now that the bread and cheese are completely gone. “It sounds like you handled it all perfectly,” she says, “I knew I did right, trusting you with their collars.” And the questions she asks are all about the shocking revelation of Indra’s heretofore unknown maternal side, and what Oktavia’s adoption will mean for the girl’s blossoming romance with Lincoln. Indra’s daughter has a much higher status than any mere scout, and Indra has never completely approved of Lincoln’s odd ideas… is she going to let the two continue cooing at each other like doves in spring?

There is a part of Lexa that wants to snarl. _Clarke is your responsibility and you left her in my care and I hurt her. I hurt her badly! You should not have entrusted her to me. You should take more care of your belongings -- you should be angry at me, for the damage I did her._ There is another part of Lexa that is immensely relieved by Anya’s indifference. 

Lexa has one last surprising revelation: Murfi had sought her out, when he heard that she was going to meet with Anya in the woods. 

“He begs to be allowed to join you,” Lexa tells Anya. “He wants to be your body servant, to look after your care and your comfort even in these rough conditions. I don’t know how well he’d do at it, though-- you’d spend more time telling him how to take care of your things than just doing it yourself.”

Anya’s eyes are wide at Murphi's request. “Did you tell him it was a choice between this and the salt-works,” she asks, joking. 

“No,” Lexa shakes her head as if the question were a serious one. “I had not thought of his disposition, yet, but I suppose he might have come with me to Polis. There is always work in the Tower, even for unskilled hands. Will you take him, then?”

Anya licks her finger and gathers the last of the crumbs from the serving platter. “I might. I have no plans for another Second now, with Tris so newly dead-- and you know I have promised my brother that I will be First to his eldest. She will be of an age to join me in just two or three more summers, if I am still alive. There is hardly enough time to start over with someone else, in between.” 

Lexa struggles to keep her face blank, to not let her distaste at the thought of Anya’s neice show.

The girl is born and raised Azgeda. 

Anya’s eldest brother was captured in battle and taken as a thrall when Anya was barely old enough to be a Second herself. She had begged for an extended leave to go in search of his fate, after Azgeda joined the Coalition. Eventually she had found him married to his former captor, the two of them struggling to eke out a living on a tiny farm an afternoon’s walk from the nearest pinprick of a village. 

That village is probably somewhat bigger now, Lexa thinks snidely, just with the custom from supporting all of the scouts that Nia must send there in order to bring back news of Anya’s relatives. The Azgeda ambassador delights in taunting Anya with fresh details every time her sees her. Sometimes he even murmurs it to Lexa when Anya is absent, his voice oily as he suggests that she might like to pass along the fact that Anya’s nephew, who was still in Anya’s brother's’ wife’s belly when Anya visited, is now just starting to walk. A fine strapping young boy, the ambassador had gloated, with three elder sisters as cunning as fox kits-- yes, they make clever, canny children in the Ice Clan, he had chortled, managing to imply that the offspring of the rest of the Coalition were doltish and fat and slow, with no bite of hunger to give them sharpness. _Really_ \-- Lexa had wanted to stab him in the gut. 

Anya is too high in status, as Heda’s own former First, to take a no-account girl from a no-account village-- from an Azgeda village-- as her Second. Whatever their blood relationship. But Anya had promised her brother, impulsively, and Lexa can see the way that this will make the kind of story that will bind Azgeda ever deeper into the Coalition. She keeps her frowns private and smiles at the ambassador and has not forbidden it. 

 

“I suppose I will take Murphy,” Anya says, breaking Lexa out of her thoughts. “If he needs teaching, well, we both know I am good at that.” She flicks her fingers against Lexa’s knee, and Lexa reaches out to cover her hand, takes it in her own and squeezes it. She is going to miss Anya so much. “And Ravin and Clarke? They will go to Polis, with you?”

Lexa shrugs, pretending apathy. If Anya has other plans, for Clarke -- and Lexa would not mind sending Ravin elsewhere, not at all, the sour thing, but the girl’s mind will be as prized by the Towers’ builders and artisans as Clarke’s is by Lida and Hosifmari-- 

“That is what I was thinking, yes.”

Anya’s free hand picks at a patch of something that has spilled and dried into the fabric of her trousers. It comes off in tiny brown flakes. 

“Clarke will have Lida during the day,” Lexa has already told Anya that Lida plans to leave Hosifmari in charge of the healing for their new network of warriors, and return to Polis and responsibility for the entirety of Lexa’s army, “and you at night. But Ravin will be vulnerable, without a nearby patron.”

Lexa has not raised the possibility of Clarke returning to her bed. She cannot bring herself to visit the healing tent, to face Clarke’s inevitable anger-- how can she ask Clarke to put that understandable rage so far aside as to lay still and soft with Lexa all through the night? 

_Clarke will have you by night_ \-- but. It’s a thought. 

Lida is well respected, but her glory is not so great that much of it will rub off onto a mere assistant. Especially if that assistant wears a collar, and was recently a despised enemy. And Polis is not just the people of the Tower, and the barracks, and the traders and caravans, and the townsfolk that cluster around to live off their custom and meet their needs. Polis is a permanent Conclave-- Polis is ambassadors. Ambassadors, and their retinues, who are rarely better and sometimes even worse. The exact sort of people, eager to prove their own status, who will delight in finding opportunities to degrade a thrall.

 

Can _Lida by day_ protect Clarke from the threat of that attention? Anya is concerned about Ravin, but Lexa has felt the slice of Ravin’s disapproval-- Ravin is unlikely to suffer abuse quietly. 

But Clarke. Clarke who has always bit her tongue and bowed her head at each new indignity, who seemed to realize immediately just how low a collar made her. Clarke who had taken so long to trust Lexa, to open up, only for Lexa to betray her affection and teach her by example that all she can expect is cruelty and unfairness. Clarke who howled for Lexa to save her, and Lexa let her be -- Lexa told the guards to haul her away -- if anyone dares to mistreat Clarke now, will it even occur to her to offer an objection? 

Would it be better to order Clarke back to Lexa’s bed, to force her to endure that closeness for the sake of the protection it offers?

“Dress Ravin out of my things,” Anya is saying. “You can say that she is a valuable asset, but that is just a few words, and easily forgotten. Dress her richly, far beyond her status, and everyone in the Tower, from the Keeper of the Keys to the boy who empties the night buckets, will see that she is a person of worth, that she is not be abused.”

“I will tell Seely,” Lexa promises, and Anya nods, satisfied.


End file.
